Drs. Allen Solomon, Brian Choi, and Miriam Fishman, screened nearly 100 high school student athletes on August 16, 2012 at Albert Einstein High School in Silver Spring, MD. The heart screenings were performed using an innovative handheld ultrasound machine, called GE's V-scan. This advanced screening using portable technology to allow physicians to view an individual's heart image on site in one or two minutes provided a more accurate method to determine if young athletes can safely participate in sports.

Tim McCaffrey, PhD, professor of Medicine at GW Medical Faculty Associates; director of the Division of Genomic Medicine at GW's School of Medicine and Health Sciences; and board member of the GW Heart and Vascular Institute, teaches a course called Personalized Genomics: An Exploration into the Heritable Elements of Disease. This course, which is offered at only three medical schools in the country, is pushing the curricular envelope by giving students the chance to have his or her genetic makeup or genome scanned to predict the relative likelihood of developing more than 100 diseases. Students send a sample of their DNA to a company called 23andMe, which analyzes DNA for disease risk, drug resistance, and ancestry. The course not only reveals personal risk for disease, it also teaches the students about each condition through slides, video explanations, and physician's perspective - stressing the important difference between risk for disease and actual diagnosis. Dr. McCaffrey notes that by exploring their own genome and heritable risk, students will become familiar with the terminology, methods, and proper interpretation, which will foster an informed and responsive physician.

Photograph by Holger Thoss, courtesy of Medicine + Health