screened for are extremely rare, single-gene disorders that are often autosomal recessive conditions and are not readily identifiable in neonates without these types of tests. Therefore, often the treating physician has never seen a patient with the disease or condition and so an immediate referral to a specialty clinic is necessary for the family. Most of the conditions identified in newborn screening are metabolic disorders that either involve i) lacking an enzyme or the ability to metabolize (or breakdown) a particular component of the diet, like phenylketonuria, ii) abnormality of some component of the blood, especially the hemoglobin protein, or iii) alteration of some component of the endocrine system, especially the thyroid gland. Many of these disorders, once identified, can be treated before more severe symptoms, such as mental retardation or stunted growth, set in. Newborn genetic screening is an area of tremendous growth. In the early 1960s, the only test was for phenylketonuria. In 2000, roughly two-thirds of states in the US screened for 10 or fewer genetic diseases in newborns. Notably, in 2007, 95% of states in the US screen for more than 30 different genetic diseases in newborns. Especially as costs have come down, newborn genetic screening offers "an excellent return on the expenditure of public health dollars". Because the risks and benefits of genomic sequencing for newborns are still not fully understood, the BabySeq Project, led by Robert C. Green of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Alan H. Beggs of Boston Children's Hospital (BCH) has been gathering critical research on newborn sequencing since 2015 as part of the Newborn Sequencing In Genomic medicine and public HealTh consortium (NSIGHT), which received a five-year grant of $25 million from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Understanding traditional healing practices Genomics will help develop an understanding of the practices that have evolved over centuries in old civilizations and which have been strengthened by observations (phenotype presentations) from generation to generation, but which lack documentation and scientific evidence. Traditional healers associated specific body types with resistance or susceptibility to particular diseases under specific conditions. Validation and standardization of this knowledge/ practices has not yet been done by modern science. Genomics, by associating genotypes with the phenotypes on which these practices were based, could provide key tools to advance the scientific understanding of some of these traditional healing practices.