Genetic Counseling graduate student Jocelyn Knazik Phelps ’17 received a $500 research grant from the Metabolism/Lysosomal Storage Diseases Special Interest Group (SIG) of the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC). The grant will support Knazik Phelps’s thesis research, “Parental Use of Newborn Screening Results for Reproductive Benefit in a Metabolic Genetics Setting,” an assessment of the extent to which parents of children with metabolic conditions use information from newborn screenings to make decisions about future pregnancies.

Also the recipient of the 2016 Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) Fellowship funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Knazik Phelps was encouraged by her thesis adviser, Adjunct Professor of Genetic Counseling Stephanie Byers, to apply for the grant. This is the inaugural metabolic/lysosomal grant, designed by NSGC to help genetic counselors better understand their role in the treatment of these storage diseases.

Knazik Phelps will present her findings to SIG members at the September 2017 NSGC annual meeting in Columbus, OH.