Abstract

Irecall vividly my initial excitement at the accomplishments of the Human Genome Project. That excitement was short-lived and diminished steadily over the next decade as I came to realize that the HGP was just another nail to be hit by the metaphoric hammer of genome-sequencing technology. To this day, I see this trend in many other spheres of public health and biomedical science. I take responsibility for using this same approach of "hammer" and "nail" in my own research program, where I use complex systems modeling to address pressing public health issues, such as adverse birth outcomes, food insecurity, and the opioid epidemic. But I am slowly yet surely shifting my ways by explicitly and slowly...