UCI-led team awarded $2.3 million as part of the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine

On April 1, 2021, the University of California, Irvine (UCI) reported – A collaborative team centered in the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and including Children’s Hospital Orange County (CHOC) and Chapman University (CU) has been awarded a three-year grant totaling in excess of $2.3 million, to address the health impacts of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) using precision medicine.  Announced by the California Governor’s Office of Planning & Research, in partnership with the Office of the California Surgeon General, the award is part of the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine (CIAPM).  The research project will begin May 2021. 

Led by Tallie Z. Baram, MD, PhD, Bren Distinguished Professor and director of the Conte Center at UCI, the UCI, CHOC and CU team has established two goals.  The first is to identify the degree to which unpredictability of early life experiences interacts with established ACEs to influence children’s neurodevelopment. The second is to employ a novel epigenetic approach, with a goal of discovering, for each child, a marker that can predict their level of resilience, so targeted interventions can be delivered to children who need them most. 

“The burden of ACEs is not equally distributed. There exists a greater risk of exposure among low socioeconomic and racial/ethnic minority communities,” explained Baram. “Through this project we seek to determine how both established ACEs and a new, preventable ACE influence children’s emotional and cognitive behaviors, and identify a way to predict early-on if a child is impacted by ACEs or is resilient. Our goal is to enable caregivers to provide special attention and intervention to those most at need, ameliorating health disparities.” 

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