Connecticut
Spotlight Projects:
"Genetic Testing for Hereditary Breast & Ovarian Cancer: What You Should Know"
Staff at the Connecticut Department of Public Health have produced an important and relevant web-based article about genetic testing for hereditary breast and ovarian cancers and BrCA mutation. Joan Foland, Valerie Fisher, Lou Gonsalves, and Beverly Burke worked together on the project, which includes useful links to discussions about appropriate testing. The article also provides links to family health history and risk assessments tools. The information appeared first on the CT Department of Health website, www.ct.gov/dph, and was then included in the regional newsletter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologysts. Medical providers working with women who are either worried about, or at risk of these cancers, will find these documents helpful, as will women themselves!
"Multicenter Validation of Algorithms to Improve Communications of Positive Newborn Screening Results to the Medical Home"
Under the auspices of The New England Genetics Collaborative (NEGC), at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, the Connecticut Department of Public Health Laboratory Newborn Screening Program is performing a study entitled, " Multicenter Validation of Algorithms to Improve Communications of Positive Newborn Screening Results to the Medical Home", for the Subsection of Region 1, New England Regional Genetics and Newborn Screening Collaborative (NERC) grant application to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA-07-016). We have provided newborn screening tandem mass spectrometry data to determine if the algorithms developed by the New England Newborn Screening Program (NENSP) can better distinguish between true cases and false positives to improve the accuracy of reporting significant results to the medical facilities responsible for treating the affected individuals. This algorithm will be applied to data collected by other newborn screening laboratories within Region 1 and across the country to determine if it may be appropriate to independent data sets other than that acquired by the NENSP for determining true abnormal Newborn Screening results. For more information about the Newborn Screening Program in Connecticut, please click here.