Illinois HR0453<\/strong><\/a> says the program \u201cprovides African American descendants of enslaved individuals the opportunity to trace their roots back to their ancestral homelands, to reconnect with their ancestral heritage, and to promote their well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cIt is a fundamental human need to know about yourself, to know about your place in history and time, your sense of belonging and well being,\u201d David said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the April Reparations meeting, David said that about 250 free kits would be available for residents in July paid for by UIUC. Residents can grab their kits at the Health and Human Services Department, Morton City Hall, 909 Davis St., second floor or contact community health specialist Kayla Smith. In order to be eligible, residents have to be at least 18 years old and have proof of residency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There also are events that David calls \u201cspit parties,\u201d where residents can pick up a kit and give saliva specimens on-site. Evanston held its first one July 3 and the next one is in Champaign. <\/p>\n
Also, \u201cIf [residents] are not able to attend an event, they can go to the website and order a kit to be sent to them by mail, and then it\u2019ll include a prepaid postage box in there for them to mail it back; we\u2019ll take it from there,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By using the TAKiR array, users have access to 1.8 million places on the human genome, as opposed to other testing organizations having access to only 700,000 David said. This gives users a more refined result, she said.<\/p>\n
Historically, the transatlantic slave trade and slavery prevented enslaved people from tracing their lineage to Africa. David said that we are currently four generations separated from the last recorded ship that trafficked humans from Africa.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that that number sounds really surprising and really sort of a short time period,\u201d she said. \u201cThey were intentional about separating people from their families, from communities, from languages, from culture and religions. So that is primarily why we have such a challenge among African Americans in traditional genealogy and in looking at the basic records.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s pushing past these boundaries that motivates David to continue this work.<\/p>\n
Because this data is sensitive, David said, the program uses two-factor multi-authentication and uses Amazon Web Services\u2019 security hub for the database system with real-time monitoring.<\/p>\n
In the future, David hopes to expand testing to other ethnic and racial groups.<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor LaKisha Tawanda David and her colleague Jailene Aguirre asked themselves one day, why…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":56369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[41337,3736,815,41338,41339,41340,159,67,132,41341,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-56368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-family-roots-genealogy-testing-program","9":"tag-genetic-testing","10":"tag-genetics","11":"tag-illinois-house-bill-hr0453","12":"tag-lakisha-tawanda-david","13":"tag-reparations","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-university-of-illinois-urbana-champaign","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114833648918230859","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}