The Indian Health Service was created within the Department of Health and Human Services to integrate traditional Indian healing with Western biomedicine.
Medical ethicists have discussed the use of race classification in determining disease prevalence and the response of specific ethnic groups to different medications.
Physicians need to take an active role in improving the genetic literacy of the general population and also push for public health policies that make new genetic tools available to everyone.
Genetic information is redefining what society and the medical profession considers to be normal and what departures from the norm are deserving of medical intervention.
A historical review shows how medicine's focus has changed from the time of Hippocratic physicians to present-day medicine to focus on the patient as an individual.