Characteristics and evaluation outcomes of genomics curricula for health professional students: a systematic literature review

With the increased advances in genomics, leading health authorities have advocated the importance of incorporating genomics content into health professional school education to ensure those students achieve adequate genomic competencies. Yet, information regarding the genomics education status for this particular group is lacking. We conducted a systematic literature review to summarize the characteristics and evaluation outcomes of genomics curricula for health professional students. Medline (OVID), EMBASE, CAB (EBSCO), Global Health, MedEdPORTAL, Google Scholar, and Web of Science were searched for relevant articles. Forty-one articles met our inclusion criteria. The majority were conducted in the United States and offered to pharmacy and medical students (the number of students ranged from 10 to 2674). The effects of genomics curricula on students’ knowledge (n = 36), attitudes (n = 16), self-efficacy (n = 14), comfort level (n = 4), intention (n = 3), motivation (n = 3), and behavior (n = 2) were assessed. Although those results were generally positive, 68.3% of the genomics curricula were not theory-based, and most studies did not report follow-up data (85.4%). Our findings provided information on the existing genomics curricula available for health professional students.