Vence L. Bonham Jr., J.D.

Vence L. Bonham, Jr. is acting deputy director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and a member of the senior leadership team for the institute. Mr. Bonham provides leadership for the institute’s health equity and workforce diversity programs and works in partnership across NIH to promote the mission of the institute.

He received his Bachelor of Arts from James Madison College at Michigan State University and his Juris Doctor degree from the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.  Mr. Bonham was a fellow in the American Association of Medical Colleges Health Services Research Fellowship Program. Mr. Bonham was a tenured faculty member at Michigan State University with appointments in the Colleges of Medicine and Law. He is currently an associate investigator in the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) within the Division of Intramural Research's Social and Behavioral Research Branch. He leads the Health Disparities Unit, which investigates the equitable integration of new genomic knowledge and precision medicine into clinical settings. 

His research focuses primarily on the social implications of new genomic knowledge, particularly in communities of color. He studies how genomics influences the use of the constructs of race and ethnicity in biomedical research and clinical care, and the role of genomics in exacerbating or ameliorating health inequities. The Bonham group also studies sickle cell disease, a condition that will be impacted by emerging curative genomic technologies, but has faced significant health disparities both in the United States and globally.

Within the Social and Behavioral Research Branch, Mr. Bonham directs the Health Disparities Unit.  The mission of the HDU is to investigate approaches to translating new genomic knowledge and precision medicine into clinical settings without exacerbating health inequities.

The Bonham group is one of a small number of research teams working to bring empirical evidence to questions regarding the role of genomics in reducing or exacerbating health disparities. His research program utilizes a variety of methods and data types including qualitative interviews, quantitative survey methods, and biological data including genomic, microbiome, and clinical data.  

Mr. Bonham and colleagues have developed the first scale to assess health professionals' use of race and genetics in clinical practice, called the Bonham and Sellers Race Attributes in Clinical Evaluation (RACE) scale. Additionally, he created an index designed to measure health professionals' knowledge of human genetic variation and their beliefs and attitudes about its relationship to race (GKAI Scale). This body of work informs a conceptual model of the influence of race in the clinical encounter, which views the clinician-patient relationship as bi-directional. The model incorporates healthcare providers' knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about human genetic variation.

Currently, the Bonham group is exploring how participation in genomics research impacts underrepresented and under-resourced populations by investigating how genomic research results are returned to participants from these populations. With this information, the Bonham group is developing policy guidelines to return genomic findings to under-resourced participants. These guidelines will aid investigators in developing programs and policies for working with under-resourced groups and help prevent health inequities due to genomics research.

The Bonham group also studies sickle cell trait and sickle cell disease, a condition with applications for emerging genomic technologies and a significant health disparity impact both in the United States and globally. In 2014, Mr. Bonham established the Insights into the Microbiome and Environmental Contributions to Sickle Cell Disease and Leg Ulcers Study (INSIGHTS), conducted at the NIH Clinical Center and Montefiore Medical Center. The central goal of this study is to examine the microbial, genomic, psychosocial, and environmental contributors to leg ulcers in sickle cell disease, and more broadly to evaluate variation in phenotype in the disease. To achieve its goals, the study characterizes the skin microbiome of sickle cell disease patients, collects genomic and clinical data, and uses social science methods to assess the social environment and psychosocial status (e.g., stress, discrimination, stigma and depression) of individuals with and without leg ulcers. INSIGHTS is highly interdisciplinary and incorporates national and international expertise from health services research, microbiology, genomics, hematology, psychology and sociology.

Sickle cell disease will be one of the first conditions to be impacted by recent advances in gene editing. As a result, the Bonham group investigates the perspectives of the sickle cell disease community on somatic genome editing. This work will inform the development and clinical applications of emerging curative genetic therapies for sickle cell disease.