systems medicine and the publics health系统医学和公共健康.pdfVIP

Burke and Trinidad Genome Medicine 2011, 3:47 /content/3/7/47 R E S E A R C H H I G H L I G H T Systems medicine and the public’s health Wylie Burke* and Susan Brown Trinidad See correspondence article: /content/3/7/43 As Bousquet and colleagues observe, most common Abstract diseases have a complex etiology that includes host, Innovative ‘systems’ approaches to biomedical environmental and social determinants, acting across the research oer substantial promise for advancing lifespan. In particular, social conditions such as poverty, knowledge and improving health care, as outlined substandard housing and restricted access to employ- by Bousquet et al. in this issue. However, they are ment and education are strongly associated with negative unlikely to improve population health without health outcomes [2-4]. How adverse social conditions concurrent eorts to address environmental and social contribute to disease remains poorly understood; if contributors to health, including conditions such as systems biology can elucidate this relationship, it might poverty, substandard housing, and restricted access to lead to welcome new strategies for prevention or early employment and education. Biomedical researchers treatment. Such developments would represent an have a responsibility to promote realistic expectations important advance. However, P4 medicine cannot solve for systems or ‘P4’ medicine, a