Karen Huelsman joined TriHealth in 2012 as a Licensed and Board-Certified Genetic Counselor specializing in hereditary cancer predisposition testing, risk-based surveillance, cancer prevention, and genomic-informed personalized management. She has over 21 years of experience in oncology genomics. In 1994, she founded the first Hereditary Cancer Program and Huntington’s Disease Testing protocol in Southwest Ohio while at Children’s Hospital Medical Center. At TriHealth, she has been an active partner on multiple tumor site leadership groups and helped build the Precision Oncology program. With the rising applications of biomarker-driven treatment and clinical trials, her role evolved into Precision Oncology Lead. Karen achieved her MS in Medical Genetics at University of Cincinnati and her BSE in Genetic Bioengineering at Purdue. She has earned recent advanced certificate training in Pharmacogenomics from University of Colorado, Oncology Genomics from American College of Clinical Pharmacy, and Precision Oncology Technology from Harvard Medical School.
In addition to consulting for germline and somatic test results with clinicians, patients, and families, she partners with a large, innovative oncology team as a catalyst and connector for clinical, research, and program development. She oversees the Precision Oncology process for all TriHealth oncology sites, delivers grant funded quality improvement and measurable outcomes, leads TriHealth KOLs in Precision Oncology Workgroup, presents Molecular Tumor Board, contributes to standards in oncology care, and sits on several advisory groups. She is an accomplished speaker for professional and lay groups, having presented at many national conferences, and she has authored more than 20 original publications. Interests include layers of multi-omics, pharmacogenomics, liquid biopsy, circulating tumor DNA in multi-cancer early detection, epigenetic modification thru DNA methylation and applications of AI in cancer care. Her personal and professional mission is to provide executive level genomic guided care with health equity for all patients and their families.