Precision health: Improving health for each of us and all of us

Your genes, behaviors (such as exercise and eating habits), and environment are all factors that affect your health. The goal of precision health is to protect your health by measuring these factors and acting on them. Interventions can be tailored to you, rather than using the same approach for everyone.

You might have heard the terms “precision medicine” and “precision health” and wondered how they relate to you. Precision medicine, also called personalized medicine, helps your doctor find your unique disease risks and treatments that will work best for you. Precision health is broader—it includes precision medicine but also approaches that occur outside the setting of a doctor’s office or hospital, such as disease prevention and health promotion activities. Precision health involves approaches that everyone can do on their own to protect their health as well as steps that public health can take (sometimes called “precision public health”).

Let’s explore how precision health approaches can better predict, prevent, treat, and manage disease for you and your family.