Why do 3 major diseases disproportionately impact Black Canadians? New genome project aims to find out
2026/01/30 1 Comment
Useful and important study. As noted, developing trust will be a challenge:
Black people are disproportionately impacted by certain diseases, including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and an aggressive form of breast cancer known as triple-negative. Starting on Feb. 1, researchers from Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia are launching the genCARE project to map the genomes of more than 10,000 Black Canadians with these three diseases, as well as people who have no underlying medical conditions.
The leaders of the project — funded by Genome Canada — hope their findings will help inform where treatment and preventive care can be targeted, as well as achieve more equitable, anti-racist health outcomes.
“If we are not there, we will not be counted,” Prescod said. “We will not be involved in finding solutions.”
Prescod estimates that less than five per cent of genetic studies worldwide include data from Black people, which means the findings of those studies may not apply to them.
Prescod hopes the research results will allow her to help her patients at Black Creek better manage their conditions.
The ultimate goal of genCARE, according to Dr. Upton Allen, the project’s administrative lead, is to take a patient’s genetic makeup and other factors into consideration during diagnosis and treatment — a practice known as precision medicine.
“It might help us to better understand why certain people get these disorders, why some get it more severe than others,” Allen said. “It might even help us to better design treatments that are more targeted.”
Overcoming mistrust
Allen says researchers involved with the project must overcome a long history of discrimination against Black people that has fuelled their mistrust of medical institutions.
And that makes recruitment difficult in a project that he says needs thousands of participants.
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
It’s a good idea to do this medical research. The concept of a genetic impact on a racial subgroup of the Canadian population is probably anathema to those who claim that race is purely a social construct. The truth is more complicated. A person who can trace their genetic history to a particular region of the world is likely to have different genetic predispositions to disease than someone who can trace their genetic history to a different region. I am curious to see how this research treats people whose genetic history traces to two or more regions. Perhaps their mixture of genetic traits makes them less susceptible to some genetically transmitted diseases, and more susceptible to others.