Newswise — A delegation of students from Sarah Lawrence's graduate program in human genetics will be traveling to Baton Rouge for a week in March to volunteer at the Family Find Call Center. The Center helps reunite families, scattered by Hurricane Katrina, with the remains of loved ones identified through DNA identity testing.
The Call Center is especially interested in working with genetic counselors because of their familiarity with family histories and experience working with families under crisis. The work involves taking family histories (for pedigree structure, not disease) from the families of people who have been reported missing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and still not found alive or definitely identified as deceased. Because the flooding destroyed the homes and personal items of many of the missing persons, the usual forensics practice of obtaining a sample of DNA from a missing person's hairbrush or toothbrush will not work in most cases. Therefore, reference DNA samples need to be collected from close relatives to match missing persons with recovered, unidentified bodies that cannot be identified by dental records.
The genetic counselor volunteers will call the family members who reported the person missing, build a family tree, obtain location and contact information for close relatives, determine which relatives are willing to give a DNA sample (via buccal swab) for this purpose, and then provide this information to the personnel who are scheduling the DNA sample collections. Because of the long delay and stress of having a missing family member, the families are grieving and the counselors taking the family history need to be expert at crisis counseling, as well. For this reason, the students of the Sarah Lawrence Genetic Counseling program are ideal candidates.
The group of seven students will be led and precepted by Siobhan Dolan, MD, MPH, a clinical geneticist (and obstetrician) who is on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence as well as the Albert Einstein College of Medicine / Montefiore Medical Center. Dr. Dolan has a long standing interest in public health and serves as the Associate Medical Director for the March of Dimes.
The delegation will travel to Baton Rouge on Sunday March 12, 2006. They will volunteer in the Call Center Mon 3/13 " Fri 3/17, and then return to New York.
RSS