Digital health platform showing personalized genomics data
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The future of medicine is coming to South Carolina. That may surprise many who assume that leadership in medical practice is the exclusive province of the Northeast, Texas or California. A new statewide program in South Carolina is challenging that assumption. This pilot initiative reaches every corner of the state, including many rural communities, to explore whether genomic screening can serve as a foundation for preventive health.
In its first phase, the program offers genomic testing to 50,000 adults, screening for inherited predispositions to three major life-threatening diseases. Early results are striking. Roughly one in every 60 to 65 participants is found to have a treatable inherited risk. If identified in time, it could prevent serious illness or death. This effort may be the first step toward comprehensive, population-wide genomic screening in South Carolina.
In Destiny’s Child No Longer: Rewriting Genetic Fate, we imagine a future in which every person could know their inherited disease risk early enough to act on it. That future has advanced quickly for newborns, with the United Kingdom and Florida beginning to sequence every baby’s genome.
What the Program Looks For
In Our DNA SC screens for three inherited conditions on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list. These diseases include hereditary breast and ovarian cancers, Lynch syndrome and familial hypercholesterolemia, which causes life-threateningly high cholesterol. Lynch syndrome drives a share of colon, uterine and other cancers.
Each of these conditions has one thing in common. Learning of the risk before symptoms appear allows individuals to lower it. For example, a woman with a BRCA1 variant can begin mammograms and MRI screening in her twenties or consider preventive surgery. A person with Lynch syndrome can start colonoscopies a decade or more before the general population, catching and removing precancerous growths. A family history of runaway cholesterol becomes a reason to begin statin therapy in adolescence, not middle age.
A Different Approach to Testing
Traditional genetic testing is reserved for people already sick or for those with a strong family history that pushes them into a specialty clinic. Population screening flips that logic. Rather than waiting for a diagnosis or a family tragedy, the program invites anyone in the state to learn what their DNA can tell them ahead of time.
The Medical University of South Carolina designed the program with three ways to participate. People can visit a clinic and give a blood sample. They can attend a community collection event, often set up in partnership with local churches, health systems or public health groups. They can also ask for a saliva kit to be sent to their home in the mail. A cheek swab is all it takes. The sample is sent to Helix, a genomics company partnering on the program, for sequencing. Results return to the patient’s medical record within weeks.
Reaching the Population
The program’s reach is the study’s most striking finding. Enrollments came from all 46 counties in the state, from Charleston and Greenville down to the smallest rural communities. When the team adjusted for population size, participation held up across urban and rural areas alike. It also held up across communities the CDC classifies as socially vulnerable, meaning neighborhoods with lower incomes, weaker access to transportation or fewer healthcare providers.
For decades, the reference DNA databases used to interpret genetic tests have been built largely from populations in Iceland, the United Kingdom and select regions of the United States. A variant that looks abnormal in one population may be perfectly common in another. The more diverse the reference set, the more accurate the results for everyone. The goal is to ensure that people from every part of South Carolina, urban and rural, are represented in the emerging library.
Technology is the easy part. Reaching people is harder. Some have never heard of genetic screening. Others carry an understandable wariness about how their genetic information might be used, a concern rooted in decades of misuse of health data in vulnerable communities.
The program has sought to address that concern through transparency and local partnerships. Participants receive plain-language information about how their data will be stored and used. The database is deidentified for research. Anyone who tests positive for one of the three conditions receives free genetic counseling to interpret what the result means for them and their family.
What Comes Next
The first phase of In Our DNA SC set out to answer a single question: can a large public genomic screening effort actually reach a diverse rural state? The answer appears to be yes.
The vision that genetic destiny should not be a fixed sentence, but a starting point for informed decisions. Together, South Carolina’s adult genomic screening program and Florida’s expanded newborn screening initiative represent the first tentative steps toward that vision. What is happening now in these states offers a preview of a future in which identifying and treating inherited risk becomes a routine part of medical care, from birth through adulthood. If these efforts succeed, they will prevent countless cases of serious, life‑threatening illness. They will also provide a roadmap for other states—and eventually nations—to follow.