can empower oneself to take an active role in promoting their own health. Genomics and understanding of disease susceptibility can help validate family history tool for use by practitioners and the public. IOM is validating the family history tool for six common chronic diseases (breast, ovarian, colorectal cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke) (IOM Initiative). Validating cost effective tools can help restore importance of basic medical practices (e.g. family history) in comparission to technology intensive investigations. The genomic face of immune responses A critical set of phenomena that ties together various aspects of health interventions, such as drug sensitivity screening, cancer or autoimmune susceptibility screening, infectious disease prevalence and application of pharmacologic or nutrition therapies, is the systems biology of the immune response. For example, the influenza epidemic of 1918, as well as the recent cases of human fatality due to H5N1 (avian flu), both illustrate the potentially dangerous sequence of immune responses to this virus. Also well documented is the only case of spontaneous "immunity" to HIV in humans, shown to be due to a mutation in a surface protein on CD4 T cells, the primary targets of HIV. The immune system is truly a sentinel system of the body, with the result that health and disease are carefully balanced by the modulated response of each of its various parts, which then also act in concert as a whole. Especially in industrialized and rapidly developing economies, the high rate of allergic and reactive respiratory disease, autoimmune conditions and cancers are also in part linked to aberrant immune responses that are elicited as the communities' genomes encounter swiftly changing environments. The causes of perturbed immune responses run the gamut of genome-environment interactions due to diet, supplements, sun exposure, workplace exposures, etc. Public health genomics as a whole will absolutely require a rigorous understanding of the changing face of immune responses. Newborn screening The experience of newborn screening serves as the introduction to public health genomics for many people. If they did not undergo prenatal genetic testing, having their new baby undergo a heel stick in order to collect a small amount of blood may be the first time an individual or couple encounters genetic testing. Newborn genetic screening is a promising area in public health genomics that appears poised to capitalize on the public health goal of disease prevention as a primary form of treatment. Most of the diseases that are