Genetics for Healthcare

Today Rome sits down with a living legend: Dr. Lee Hood, CEO of Phenome Health, a trailblazer who helped launch the Human Genome Project and has spent 60+ years pushing medicine forward. This triumphant conversation shows how precision medicine—using your genome, your microbiome, your blood, and even your wearables—can predict risk early, prevent disease, and extend health span. Dr. Hood shares ho...

For decades, Mariela Ayala lived under the weight of misdiagnosis—insomnia, depression, recurring infections, medication side effects, and steady weight gain. As prescriptions stacked up (25 at one point), she kept pushing, studying, and showing up for life. But everything changed when a perceptive psychiatrist ordered pharmacogenomic testing. The results: an inherited MTHFR gene variant impacting...

In this episode Kasey Walsh explains how simple social media connections grew into formal research collaborations, a nonprofit, and a patient‑owned data platform, all motivated by her determination to help her daughter Robbie, who was born with an AP-4 hereditary spastic paraplegia (AP‑4 HSP). She has partnered with institutions like Boston Children's Hospital, the Broad Institute, and the Univers...

EPISODE SUMMARY Rome experienced a career high talking with Dr. Otis W. Brawley, a globally recognized Medical Oncologist and Epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, about his work to reduce healthcare disparities. Dr Bawley is a former Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of the American Cancer Society, and an author on the recent Report on the Status of Disparities in the Unite...

Journalist Larry Ingrassia speaks candidly with Rome about the years his family spent facing unexplained, early‑onset cancer diagnoses before anyone knew Li‑Fraumeni syndrome existed. He recounts the shock of watching relatives fall ill, the delays in diagnosis, and the sense of powerlessness that followed when no one connected the dots. The lost opportunities for earlier detection and prevention,...

Where did you grow up and what attracted you to a career in medicine? What is precision medicine? This phrase has been used primarily to describe a different approach to cancer care. tumor profiling – molecular characterization of a person’s cancer cells what drives it but your POV is prevention, and implementing an pathway to integrate genetics and genomic information into the healthcare ecosyste...

In this gripping episode of Genetics for Healthcare, we sit down with Dr. Alexea Gaffney-Adams , an infectious disease specialist and internist who found herself on the wrong side of the medical system she serves. Despite knowing and sharing her family history, as well as her insistence on her own high-risk status, Dr. Alexea was repeatedly denied genetic testing by her own colleagues—a decision t...

When doctors speak quickly or use medical terms, patients often leave appointments feeling unsure about what just happened, and that confusion can cost you your life. In this episode Dr. Beatrice Preti explains why it’s crucial to build the confidence to ask questions, to insist on clear explanations, and to push for options that fit your values and lifestyle goals. They discuss real cases where p...

In this eye-opening episode, we sit down with Krista Brown, an oncology nurse navigator whose personal journey dramatically exposes the critical knowledge gaps in modern healthcare regarding genetic variants and cancer risk. Despite her professional background, Krista found herself navigating a system where her own ATM variant – a genetic mutation significantly increasing her risk for breast, panc...

Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders don’t appear overnight—they develop silently in the brain for years. In this episode, we explore how genetics, sleep, and lifestyle combine to shape your brain health, and why precision medicine may be the key to earlier detection and more effective treatment. Dr. Kimberly J Hatchett, The Neuro Doc, breaks down, in plain language, how certa...

In this monumental 50th episode, we celebrate the remarkable journey and courage of Diane Hardesty, a hereditary cancer awareness advocate and cancer previvor. Diane's story is a powerful testament to the life-saving potential of genetic testing. After losing ten family members to cancer, she took the crucial step to undergo hereditary cancer testing, leading to a transformative shift in her famil...

In this episode Rome Madison interviews Dr. Marleah Dean Kruzel about her journey as a BRCA2 variant carrier and being a cancer previvor. This has informed her work teaching patient-centered communication to healthcare providers to expand patient access to genetics and genomics. Dr. Kruzel describes how family history led to testing, why she waited to take her test, and how that lived experience s...

In this poignant episode, Rome sits down with Mariana Arnaut, the CEO of The After Cancer , to discuss the often-overlooked challenges faced by individuals after cancer treatment. While conquering cancer is a monumental victory, many survivors find themselves grappling with a new set of struggles that can feel isolating and overwhelming. Mariana shares her expertise on navigating the complex lands...

When Stacey Martin received her mother's stage four uterine cancer diagnosis, she never imagined it would lead to discovering her own genetic time bomb. After her mother tested positive for a CDH1 germline mutation during treatment at Mayo Clinic, Stacey faced a 50% chance of carrying the same variant that dramatically increases gastric cancer risk up to 80%. This episode follows Stacey's incredib...

Endeavor Health is proving that precision medicine isn’t just for academic centers or rare-disease clinics. it can be In this episode, Rome talks with Justin Brueck, Vice President of Innovation and Research at Endeavor Health, about how their system has hardwired population genetics into everyday primary care for hundreds of thousands of patients. Justin walks through the evolution of Endeavor’s...

JJ Singleton was a 27-year-old athlete from the small Appalachian town in North Carolina, when he was diagnosed with aggressive colorectal cancer. His story highlights the alarming rise of early-onset colorectal cancer, a disease now the leading cause of cancer death for men under 50. Growing up in a rural community where going to the doctor was often avoided and early death was dismissed as "God'...

Marianne Pearson, VP of Patient Care and Lindsey Glaspell, Clinal Nurse Navigator at the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, join Rome for a blunt, funny — but deadly serious — briefing on colorectal cancer prevention. Marianne breaks down how knowing your family history and normalizing talking about your poop habits are just as important as timely screening with colonoscopy and stool tests to prevent col...

She thought she was just another woman with lumps and dismissive doctors until a simple saliva test rewrote her future. Veronica Tucker’s story rips through complacency: from being told “(the cancer) is on your father’s side, don’t worry”; the gut-punch of a BRCA2 positive result, to the wrenching choices of double mastectomy and hysterectomy before cancer could take hold. This episode traces the...

We are honored to speak with Amy Cohen, who made history as the first person with sickle cell disease to run and finish the New York City Marathon. She opens up about her diagnosis, and the pivotal moment in high school when the reality of the disease set in, emphasizing the necessity of pushing through fear and living boldly against external limitations. Amy frames her marathon finish not as a so...

In this episode research geneticist and author Susan Liebman joins us to tell the personal and scientific story behind her memoir The Dressmaker’s Mirror: Sudden Death, Genetics, and a Jewish Family’s Secret . Susan unpacks generations of silence around heart disease and how sudden deaths and a decades-long family history of dilated cardiomyopathy led her to the discovery of an FLNC gene mutation...

In this powerful episode of Through The Pain , we dive deep into the lived realities behind diagnosis, treatment, and the emotional weight patients often carry in silence. Too often, patients receive life-altering information without the context, clarity, or support needed to truly understand what’s happening to their bodies. In this conversation, Christelle Salomon and Wunmi Bakare unpack what th...

Hot off the stage speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I spoke with Mark Amouzgar, founder of March Health about: how AI-powered “digital twins” can accelerate precision medicine the hard truth about protecting patient privacy as this tech scales World Economic Forum is about fostering global cooperation on complex issues that drive economic growth and resilience. If you fol...

Rome sits down with Stephane Budel, Founding Partner at Decibio, a premier strategy consulting firm dedicated to advancing precision medicine. This conversation aims to demystify the complex world of NGS testing, providing patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals with a clearer understanding of how these powerful tools are revolutionizing cancer prevention, treatment, and long-term manag...

This week we sit down with Sara Kavanaugh, the voice behind The Positive Gene Podcast, who shares her deeply personal story as a cancer pre-vivor. Discovering not one, but two gene variants that significantly increased her cancer risk, Sara transformed her fear and anxiety into powerful action. This conversation about genetics redefines what it means to face cancer risks empowered and illuminates...

In this special New Year's episode, host Rome Madison steps into the interviewee chair, sharing the driving force behid his two-decade career in precision medicine with DNA Today Podcast host Kira Deneen. Rome recounts his unexpected entry into the field, and a self-taught pursuit of molecular science that led him to market groundbreaking cancer diagnostics. Rome's reveals that his passionate miss...