Justine Horne is a postdoctoral fellow at Université Laval and visiting fellow at Harvard University/Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is also a registered dietitian with the College of Dietitians of Ontario and sessional instructor at Western University (Brescia University College) in the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences. Dr. Horne obtained her PhD from Western University, where she studied the pragmatic application of nutrigenetics in a primary care setting. As a current CIHR-funded postdoctoral fellow, her research focuses on the use of multi-omics technologies to guide precision nutrition. Dr. Horne has published a number of peer-reviewed articles and is known in the dietetics and academic community for her expertise in nutritional genomics and precision nutrition. She has been invited to present locally, nationally, and internationally to various healthcare professionals, university students, and academics. Dr. Horne has received a number of awards and honours for her accomplishments and notably was a finalist for the Royal Society of Canada’s 2020 Alice Wilson Award, which is presented to “a woman of outstanding academic qualifications who is entering a career in scholarship or research at the postdoctoral level.” She is also an active advocate for evidence-based healthcare. Twitter: @justinehorneRD
Precision nutrition is a field that involves personalization of nutrition recommendations based on individual factors such as age, gender, and biochemical data, as well as genetic variation. Nutrigenomics, a component of precision nutrition, is a discipline that focuses on the interplay between genetics (including gene expression and function), nutrition, and health-related outcomes. With advancing science, healthcare professionals are now offering nutrigenomics testing in their clinical practice. In addition, patients are bringing the results of direct-to-consumer nutrigenomics tests to healthcare professionals for interpretation. This uptake presents several challenges related to ethics, scientific validity, analytic validity and clinical utility among others. This session will provide an overview of the current challenges to the uptake of nutrigenomics and precision nutrition in clinical practice, while presenting strategies to help overcome these challenges. Furthermore, this session will provide an overview of research related to cognitive and behavioural outcomes resulting from the practical application of nutrigenomics and precision nutrition. Overall, this session aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the pragmatic aspects of nutrigenomics and precision nutrition.