Overview

Every person is unique. Genes, environment, and behaviors (like diet, exercise, and social interaction) are all factors that affect the health of a person. The goal of precision health is to protect health by measuring these unique characteristics and acting on them. Above and beyond the scope of traditional medicine, approaches to promoting health and treating illness can be tailored to the individual, rather than using the same approach for everyone.

Many precision health disciplines have been highly successful; for example, precision oncology develops treatments that target the unique molecular characteristics of an individual’s cancer. However, precision health approaches are under-studied and under-utilized in the area of mental health. It is the goal of PMH to utilize the scientific principles of precision health and apply them to mental health research.

Integrating the knowledge and lived experience of individuals represented in our research, we aim to ensure our work is meaningful, relevant, accessible, and useful. The perspectives of interested parties (individuals who are affected by our research) are consulted in our work to shape research questions, design studies, communicate findings, and move results into real-world applications. In this way, we focus our research on what is important to the individual and create solutions that address the needs of the individual.

The foundation of all of the work at PMH is based on existing best-evidence. Conducting systematic and scoping reviews, we aim to use the most up-to-date syntheses of existing research to inform the development of studies, hypotheses, and recommendations.

Using data from large-scale epidemiological studies and randomized controlled trials, we examine the factors that lead to living happier and healthier for longer. Employing a variety of techniques ranging from traditional epidemiological analysis to machine learning, we aim to unpack the complex interrelationships between individuals’ life experiences and their mental health.

We don’t like to use the term “tech-driven” because that suggests that technologies lead the development of solutions. Instead, we aim to use our stakeholder-informed, best-evidence, and data-driven practices to identify the solutions and we employ technologies to fit those solutions.