ABSTRACT
Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Cardiometabolic Diseases: The Role of Ethnic
Diversity in Precision Medicine, organized by Drs. Paul Franks, Ewan Pearson and Karin Conde-Knape. The
conference will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from February 4–7, 2024.
Cardiometabolic disease constitutes a major threat to global health, with the greatest affliction occurring outside
the western world. Precision medicine has enormous potential to reduce this burden yet the data that will seed
precision medicine algorithms and products often stems from people of European ancestry living in high-income
societies. Addressing this bias is important because a failure to do so may drive significant health inequities,
rather than diminish them, as precision medicine has the potential to do. Best viewed as an evolution rather than
a revolution, precision medicine will not replace, but may substantially enhance, contemporary medicine. Its key
pillars are diagnostics, prediction and prevention of the primary disease, prognosis of secondary disease,
treatment, and monitoring of risk exposure, treatment response and disease progression. For precision medicine
to fulfil its potential, a well-functioning ecosystem will be necessary, comprised of multiple stakeholders,
furnished with powerful computing infrastructures, and fueled by multidimensional data generated in people of
diverse ethnicities living in varied environments. This conference will be paired with another Keystone Symposia
conference entitled Obesity: Causes and Consequences. The joint conferences will share a keynote and joint
sessions. Participants of both conferences will also have an opportunity to network at shared mealtimes and
poster sessions. It is anticipated that this will lead to new scientific collaborations and the implementation of new
precision medicine approaches directed at better understanding and treating cardiometabolic disease.