Michigan Radio’s Stateside talks to Chad Brummett, M.D., about why opioids are overprescribed and how U-M teams are tackling acute care prescribing. “Some of that over-prescribing has been through lack of understanding, lack of guidelines, but also a want to keep people happy,” Brummett says.

Sachin Kheterpal, M.D., MBA, co-director of Precision Health, will speak at 4 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 16, at the U-M North Campus Research Center. Kheterpal’s talk is titled “Precision Health at the University of Michigan: Building the Platform Our Patients Need.” It is part of the IHPI Research Seminar Series.

If you think of your genes as your body’s hardware, your epigenome is the software that tells them how to work. U-M School of Public Health researchers explain how they are analyzing environmental and social factors along with epigenetic data to identify people and communities at risk for preventable diseases.

Researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health are working to better understand various aspects of the opioid epidemic. Among them are a chronic disease expert exploring opioid alternatives for people with chronic pain and a health policy researcher looking into how states can best monitor prescribing to curb the crisis on both a population and an individual level.

Twelve awards totaling $9 million in Fiscal Year 2017 will launch a National Institutes of Health Data Commons Pilot Phase. U-M researchers received funding as part of the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program, whose goal is to generate scientific resources that will improve the understanding of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders and advance precision medicine.

Precision Health at the University of Michigan has named Rachel Dawson as managing director. She brings more than eight years of operations and talent management experience, leading operations staff, developing teams, and representing organizations with employers and donors.

How many prescription pain pills should a patient receive after breast cancer surgery? Or hernia repair? Or gallbladder removal? A new tool developed at the University of Michigan, now available online for free, details recommendations for 11 common operations, based on pain control and surgical quality research, as well as data and surveys from patients throughout Michigan.