In recent years there has been a call for action to explore personalized, precision-based approaches in healthcare diagnostics and therapeutics (e.g., Burke and Psaty's 2007 study). In keeping with the optimism that personalized approaches hold for the future of children's mental health, it is an opportune time to bring together investigators in the mental health and drug abuse fields to discuss the implications of their scientific work for this emerging paradigm.

With this goal in mind, the recently established Institute for Translational Research in Children's Mental Health at the University of Minnesota will host its second annual symposium entitled “Moving Toward Precision Healthcare in Children's Mental Health: New Perspectives, Methodologies, and Technologies in Therapeutics and Prevention.” This symposium will feature presentations that address perennial questions in intervention research, namely, what program works best for whom, at what time, and why?

Each of these questions will be addressed by ground-breaking investigators with expertise in fields such as personalized medicine, genetics, epigenetics, neuroscience, intervention science, methodology, and technology with the goal to elucidate how recent discoveries in these fields are informing innovations in the design and implementation of precision-based interventions to address youth at high risk for mental health disorders and health compromising behaviors.

For more information and to register, please contact us at z.umn.edu/15jb