Dna Today: A Genetics Podcast

This episode we are exploring medical interpreting in genetic counseling and other areas of healthcare. Joining me are Genetic Counselor Nina Harkavy and Interpreter Lorraine Way. Nina is a prenatal genetic counselor at Columbia University. She graduated from the John Hopkins University/ NHGRI genetic counseling training program. Lorraine is a Spanish Instructor, medical interpreter and the President of Language Way, a language service company. She has a master’s in French from Middlebury College where she also studied Spanish. On This Episode We Discuss:Improved counseling experience speaking in SpanishDifference between translation and interpretation How healthcare providers can alter their communication with non-native English speakersTips for working with interpretersStandard for interpretation especially with family membersMaintaining cultural sensitivity when belief systems may impede the decision-making processConcepts that are challenging to interpret into Spanish and ways to phrase differen

Our profession has evolved over the last 50 years from a small dedicated group of genetic counselors to over 5,000 individuals in the United States, with sister organizations in Canada, Europe and Australia. Just as the field of genetics has evolved over the last 40 years, so has the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) and genetic counselors. In this podcast episode, Linda Robinson joins host Kira Dineen to highlight what hot topics, historical accomplishments, challenges, barriers and opportunities during the last 50 years of genetic counseling. Linda Robinson is a retired genetic counselor. She worked primarily prenatal and cancer roles at UCLA , University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the California Department of Health. Linda retired as the Assistant Director of Cancer Genetics at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and is currently a consultant grant writer there. She has a long list of publications, grants and awards. Linda has been a very active member of

The National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) hosted its annual conference virtually this past weekend with a new record for attendance. In this special extended installment of DNA Today we are recapping and reflecting on a few sessions from the conference. Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, PhenoTips. Imagine a health record system designed specifically for genomics. Cause let’s be honest, electronic health records are not built for genetics. Now you can stop imagining and start using, because PhenoTips is just this! PhenoTips is the world’s first complete Genomic Health record system with pedigree drawing, standardized symptom capture, diagnostic insights and more, all in one place. Check them out at PhenoTips.com. TimestampsAishwarya Arjunan 1:30-24:20Rebekah Hutchins 25:17-38:50Courtney Studwell 38:50-53:05Ashlyn Enokian 53:05-56:05Presentations Recapped/RecommendedDrawing the line with ECS: When does expanded carrier screening turn into excessive carrier screening? Live Tweet Threads b

Please keep our 2020 Best Science and Medicine Podcast Award momentum going and vote for “DNA Today” for Podcast Magazine’s “Hot 50” Podcasts! You can take 60 seconds to vote here now.Dr. Kat Arney is our guest in this episode of DNA Today. She is a fellow genetics podcaster! She is an award-winning science writer, author, presenter, broadcaster, and public speaker. Her voice will probably be familiar to you as she has appeared on radio and TV around the world including BBC Radio 4, the Naked Scientists and Naked Genetics podcasts, and more recently as the host of the Genetics Unzipped podcast. She has written for outlets including the Times Educational Supplement, BBC Science Focus, the Daily Mail, Wired, BBC Online, The Guardian, and New Scientist. Dr. Arney has authored three popular science books: “Herding Hemingway’s Cats: Understanding How Our Genes Work”, “How to Code a Human” and her new book, “Rebel Cell: Cancer, Evolution, and the New Science of Life's Oldest Betrayal”. Enter our giveaway to win a c

This episode is the last installment of our 7 part direct-consumer genetic testing series. Joining for this episode is guest Melanie Hardy, Assistant Director of JScreen Genetic Counseling Services, which is part of Emory University School of Medicine. Melanie has been an active member in The National Society of Genetic Counselors and the American Board of Genetic Counseling, including chairing multiple committees, workgroups and programs. She has also served on capstone committees for genetic counseling students at multiple universities.On This Episode We Discuss:Number of conditions on carrier screeningDifferent methods of carrier screeningConditions more common in people of Ashkenazi Jewish descentConditions where carriers can have symptomsLimitations of carrier screeningConditions identified on newborn screeningPotential differences between saliva and blood sampleIf carrier screening should be repeatedGenetic counseling session about carrier resultsReproductive options for carriersDuring this COVID-19 pan

Exciting Announcement: This week “DNA Today” won the Best 2020 Science and Medicine Podcast in The 15th Annual Podcast Awards! This is thanks to each and every listener who nominated and voted for the show. THANK YOU for being such loyal listeners for the past 8 years. We’ve been nominated for four years, and it’s incredible to win this year! For those that aren’t familiar, The Podcast Awards are the longest running podcast awards event open to shows worldwide, this year there was 250,000 people who nominated shows.Michael Schnall-Levin joins host Kira Dineen on this episode to explore genetic testing technology including next-gen sequencing, single cell sequencing and bioinformatics. This episode is part 6 of our ongoing direct-consumer genetic testing series, check out our previous episodes for other deep dives into DTC topics.Michael is the Senior Vice President President of Product, Research and Development and Founding Scientist at 10x Genomics. Before joining 10x Genomics, Michael was an NSF postdoctora

This episode is part of our ongoing direct-consumer genetic testing series. Joining the show is an award-winning journalist, Libby Copeland. Copeland, who writes about culture, science and human behavior, is the author of a new book, “The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are,” which explores the personal, familial and ethical implications of recreational DNA testing. Copeland was a reporter and editor at The Washington Post for eleven years, has been a media fellow and guest lecturer, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio. Enter our giveaway to win a copy of Libby Copeland’s book, “The Lost Family” on our Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.Also be sure to enter our mentor session giveaway with our host Kira Dineen who will be meet with the winner in an hour zoom call to discuss applying to genetic counseling schools including essays and resumes.On This Episode We Discuss:DTCs Topics explored in “The Lost Family”Approach and implications of Yaniv Erlich’s 2013 groundbreaking st

As part of this episode, 23andMe giving away a free DNA kit! To enter, go to DNA Today’s Twitter/Facebook (@DNApodcast) and Instagram (@DNAradio) and look for the post of a picture of a 23andMe kit with the simple instructions to enter. Don’t miss your chance to win this free DNA kit!Anne Greb, MS, CGC joins the show to share her expertise on direct-to-consumer genetic testing as part of our ongoing series on DNA Today. She is a genetic counselor and serves as lead of the medical education team at 23andMe. In this role, she is responsible for developing educational initiatives that equip healthcare professionals to better integrate personalized genetic information into the everyday care of their patients. Previously Anne was the program director of 3 genetic counseling programs, Wayne State University, Long Island University and Sarah Lawrence College. She also directed the medical genetics course taken by first year medical students at Wayne State University.On This Episode We Discuss:Consumers’ motivations

Picture Genetics Kit Giveaway! Enter to win your own free kit on our Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.Guests for this episode are from Fulgent Genetics (offering Picture Genetic kits), which is the sponsor of this new Direct To Consumer Genetic Testing Series. Jessica Shiles is a genetic counselor and Dr. Samuel Strom is the lab director.Jessica serves as Fulgent’s Clinical Genetics Marketing Specialist. Her main role is to provide clinical training and expertise to help develop marketing material that is used to educate, support, and inform the patients and providers Fulgent serves. With Jessica’s strong passion for patient advocacy, she also leads Fulgent’s community outreach. She is a fellow Sarah Lawrence College’s alumni where she received her Masters of Science in Human Genetics.Previously Dr. Strom was an assistant professor at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine where he pioneered interpreting genomics results in the context of clinical diagnostic testing for rare inherited diseases and cancer. A

Dr. Adam Rutherford is our guest for this second installment of our Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Testing series. He is a geneticist, author, and broadcaster. Dr. Rutherford has a PhD in Genetics, a degree in evolutionary biology, and is an honorary Research Fellow at UCLA. He was an audio-visual content editor for the journal Nature for a decade, and is a frequent contributor to the newspaper The Guardian. On radio, he is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s flagship science program, Inside Science, as well as many documentaries. On TV, he has presented multiple BBC series including The Beauty of Anatomy, The Gene Code, and award winners Playing God and The Cell. Dr. Rutherford has also been a scientific advisor to films including Biophilia Live, World War Z, The Secret Service and Ex Machina (2015). He has authored multiple books including, “A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived” and the book we will be discussing today, “How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Genes Do (and Don't) Say About Human Difference” whic

Last chance to nominate DNA Today in the Podcast Awards for the best Science and Medicine. Please take a few minutes to support the show!This episode kicks off our Direct-To-Consumer (DTCs) Genetic Testing Series! Check out our previous episodes about DTCs including episode 116, 105, 91, 80, and 56.Over this brand new series, we are going to be interviewing a whole bunch of experts including authors Adam Rutherford and Libby Copeland about their new books exploring DTCs and we get to hear directly from companies like Fulgent Genetics, JScreen, and 23andMe. So much more to come over the next few months!This series is sponsored by Picture Genetics, who is now offering FDA-authorized COVID-19 test kits. And you don’t have to leave the house, the kits are shipped directly to your home. Ordering takes only a few minutes at picturegenetics.com. Use code “DNATODAY” for 25% and free shipping on all other kits!To start off this series, we are joined by Jeanette McCarthy, MPH, PhD, who is a UC Berkeley trained genetic

Answering your listener submitted questions about the American genetic counseling board exam is the ABGC President, Adam Buchanan, MS, MPH, CGC!Aside from this role at American Board of Genetic Counseling, Adam is an associate professor, genetic counselor and Director of the Geisinger Genomic Medicine Institute. Previously, he was a research associate at Duke Cancer Institute. His clinical expertise includes intimate knowledge of recommended risk management for hereditary cancer syndromes. He is co-leading Geisinger’s MyCode genomic screening program for medically actionable genomic results, and is helping to develop a health services research portfolio on patient-participant, family, and system outcomes of this program.This episode is sponsored by PhenoTips. If you are still drawing pedigrees by hand, you are overdue for an upgrade! PhenoTips provides a free digital pedigree drawing tool. Not only is it intuitive and easy-to-use, it’s 2.5 times faster than your pen and paper. And we all know time is very val

PodcastAwards.comSelect “DNA Today: A Genetics Podcast” in the Science & Medicine CategoryIt’s that time of year again, the Podcast Awards Nominations opened today (July 1st, 2020)! So I need YOU listeners to get DNA Today nominated at podcastawards.com in the “Science in Medicine” category. Also don’t forget to check off that you would like to participate in the voting round, we will need your support then as well.The show has been nominated in 2015, 2016, and 2019, so let’s go for a fourth nomination and a win this year! This is a people’s choice award which means it’s all about the listener's favorite podcasts. To win we are going to need every single listener to go nominate DNA Today in the Science & Medicine Category.If you nominate us and share it on social media, tag us and we will repost it. AND we will give you a shoutout on the podcast/radio show.Thank you to all our listeners who have supported us for years and to all the new listeners who have recently tuned in. We look forward to many mor

Podcast Award Nominations begin July 1st, 2020! Please help DNA Today receive a fourth nomination (and hopefully a win this year!) by visiting PodcastAwards.com and selecting “DNA Today” in the Science and Medicine category. We can only receive a nomination if YOU nominate the show!This episode concludes DNA Today’s 7 part infertility series. The first episode kicked off with Lauren Isley who shared about fertility genetic counseling. The next two episodes featured a couple who went through reciprocal IVF to have their daughters (part 1 and 2). Filmmakers of fertility movie ANYA joined the show next. Dr. Kara Goldman followed discussing diagnostic fertility testing. Last episode, Genetic Counselor Jennifer Eccles explained the science behind PGT for polygenic conditions.This seventh and final infertility installment explores controversies surrounding fertility with genetic counselor and genetics podcast host, Nick Charles. He is the lead laboratory and quality control counselor at CooperSurgical, a preimplant

This episode continues DNA Today’s series about infertility. Over the last five episodes of DNA Today, we talked with experts in fertility. On the first episode we heard from Lauren Isley, a genetic counselor about artificial reproductive technologies and the genetic counseling side. We also had the Baileys on the show to share their reciprocal IVF journey in part 1 and part 2. The following episode the filmmakers of ANYA, a science fiction film about fertility. Last episode, Dr. Kara Goldman shared her experience in diagnostic fertility testing.Sponsoring the series is LetsGetChecked, check out their home testing kits including fertility, sexual health and others. Receive your own kit for 20% off by using code “DNAToday”.Jennifer Eccles joins the show to discuss PGT-P, preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic conditions. She is the Head of Genetic Counseling at Genomic Prediction Clinical Laboratory. Jennifer has over 20 years of experience in reproductive clinical genetics at institutions like Columbia

DNA Today stands in solidarity with BLM and in doing so we wanted to share a few resources with you listeners where you can educate yourself by listening to Black voices in our genetics community. You can support BLM through donations to ActBlue here.Dr. Janina Jeff was a guest back on episode 117 where she shared her new podcast, “In Those Genes”, that uses genetics to uncover the lost identities of african descended americans through the lens of black culture. Please, listen and support her show along with other black podcasts like American Origin Stories, She Too STEM, PhDivas among many others.We also wanted to bring awareness to the Minority Genetic Professionals Network. This group supports minority medical genetic providers and trainees to increase the diversity in our profession and to serve minority communities. MGP also provides resources on how to support non-white patients and co-workers. You can also follow them on Twitter and Instagram.Learn more through Twitter accounts like @DecolonizeDNA and

This episode continues DNA Today’s series about infertility. Over the last few episodes of DNA Today, we talked with experts in fertility. On the first episode we heard from Lauren Isley, a genetic counselor about artificial reproductive technologies and the genetic counseling side. We also had the Baileys on the show to share their reciprocal IVF journey in part 1 and part 2.Sponsoring the series is LetsGetChecked, check out their home testing kits including fertility, sexual health and others. Receive your own kit for 20% off by using code “DNAToday”.It’s been so interesting to hear different perspectives about fertility as it impacts so many people’s lives. Currently 7.3 million Americans are facing infertility! I hope you all have learned a lot alongside us. Be sure to go back and listen to all the fertility episodes if you are interested!On this next installment of the fertility series two guests join the show, documentarian Jacob Okada and anthropologist Carylanna Taylor, PhD who wrote and produced ANYA

This episode is part of DNA Today’s ongoing infertility series. The series was launched hearing from Genetic Counselor Lauren Isley, she shared about artificial reproductive technologies and infertility genetic counseling.Sponsoring the series is LetsGetChecked, check out their home testing kits including fertility, sexual health and others. Receive your own kit for 20% off by using code “DNAToday”.Last episode we heard from Katie and Christina Bailey. They were sharing their journey to parenthood through reciprocal In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). We continue this conversation on this episode, so if you haven’t heard the first part of our discussion, you are going to want to listen to the previous episode where Christina and Katie Bailey talk about the beginning of their story with IVF.The Baileys have a large following of nearly 100,000 on Instagram, so you can check them out @BabyBaileyMamaDrama.On This Episode We Discuss:Conceiving a Second TimeGenetic Testing During PregnancyTalking to Kids About Their Conc

Celebrate Match Day with DNA Today on Friday, April 24th at 7pmET (4pmPT) on Zoom.We want to wish you congrats and share our advice for navigating grad school. Previous guests from last year’s Match Day episode from Sarah Lawrence College’s Class of 2020 will be hosting including Karl Krahn, Maria van Noordenne, Ashlyn Enokian, and Kira Dineen. We’ll also be doing a QnA, so bring your questions!In the meantime, you can revisit our episode (#101) to hear tips from the hosts on how to prepare and what to expect during your first year.All are welcome to attending including current applicants (matched and not matched), prospective/future applicants, and listeners of the show!

This episode continues the DNA Today’s series about infertility. If you haven’t yet heard the episode with Genetic Counselor Lauren Isley, I highly recommend you go back and listen to learn more about the artificial reproductive technologies and the genetic counseling side. It’s a great preview into this episode.Sponsoring the series is LetsGetChecked, check out their home testing kits including fertility, sexual health and others. Receive your own kit for 20% off by using code “DNAToday”.Currently 7.3 million Americans are facing infertility, and this series is bringing awareness to infertility along with teaching the science and genetic side. On this episode, we are going to hear personal perspectives. Joining me are Katie and Christina Bailey. They share their journey to parenthood through reciprocal In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Christina and Katie have a large following of nearly 100,000 on Instagram, so you can check them out @BabyBaileyMamaDrama. This is part 1 of our conversation, for part 2, you will