The promise of using personalized genomic information to promote behavior change: is the debate over, or just beginning?

Abstract

Over recent years, significant debate has centered on whether and how communication of personalized genomic risk information can positively influence health behavior change. Several thoughtful commentaries have cautioned that efforts to incorporate genomic risk feedback to motivate health behavior change have had little success. As a field, we should consider the reasons for this limited success and be strategic in the next steps for this line of research. In this article, we consider several reasons that prior research that integrates personalized genomic information has had relative degrees of success in changing or maintaining health behaviors. We suggest ways forward and outline the possibilities presented by emerging technologies and novel approaches in translational genomic research.