“Book club” Course Format:

1. Purchase the course (with or without the book, see below). Quiz and evaluation links will be emailed to you shortly.
2. Purchase or borrow the book or audiobook (if not purchased with course).
3. Complete the book on your own schedule. A PDF of the final quiz is available to use as you read along.
4. Pass a 42-question quiz online (must pass with an 80% or higher). Quiz may be taken 3 times. If not passed after 3 attempts, CEU credit will not be awarded, per NSGC guidelines.
5. Complete the course evaluation.
6. You will receive an email within 1 business day confirming completion of the CEU program. This email is sent manually so don’t worry when you don’t receive it immediately. You can confirm your score (of 80% or higher to pass) on your own quiz.
7. All courses finished each month will be submitted to NSGC the first week of the next month. Official CEU certificates will be issued within two weeks of that submission. The last day to finish a course (pass the quiz & complete the eval) is December 11, 2025 if you want your CEU certificate issued by NSGC in 2025. If NSGC CEU certificate is needed sooner, please email info@theceushop.org and I will be happy to submit to NSGC immediately (with an up to 14 day TAT on their end).

General Description:

Participants will read the book “This Boy We Made” by author Taylor Harris. This memoir shares the many ways that chronic illness, genetic testing, and the healthcare system have impacted the Harris family. The author shares her candid thoughts, feelings, and analysis of her family’s healthcare journey with her son’s undiagnosed chronic condition, which also led to her unexpected diagnosis as a BRCA2 mutation carrier. This program is designed to do a deep dive on one family’s story, as opposed to providing a broad summary or overview of a topic.

Learning Objectives:

1. Examine how race impacted the author’s healthcare journey as a Black mother and patient.
2. Discuss how the authors son’s undiagnosed chronic illness has impacted his mother from a psychosocial perspective.
3. Identify times in the author’s and her son’s healthcare journeys when she felt providers used best practices to develop a working alliance.

Link to publisher’s book description (clicking will take to you an external site)

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Review from Book Club participant Kelly Moyer, MS, CGC:

What a beautiful book! The author is SO insightful, brave, and vulnerable. She grabs you right away and makes you invested in this family’s story. She is very good at articulating the specific the fears and grief that every parent would feel during a long diagnostic odyssey for a diagnosis for her son, while she is quick to point out when her own anxiety disorder might be amplifying them.

She describes the pros and cons of the IEP process, and asks whether racial assumptions contribute to gate-keeping of services. She wonders if her son will be safe as a black adult male walking in the world where his unusual behavior could be perceived as dangerous.

Her strong Christian faith is woven throughout the book. I am not religious but when important life-threatening diagnoses are being made or considered in me or a loved one, I have definitely wondered about fair vs. unfair, shame, and higher powers. She is not asking for others to join her faith, just including in her story how that faith gives her comfort and hope during her most difficult times.

She has a good understanding of genetics, uses terms appropriately, and defines them for lay readers. The book provides good insight into patient/family perspectives in both pediatric and cancer genetics, and whole exome sequencing. She does a great job of explaining the process of genetic counseling, using a metaphor for having her family medical history collected: “[the GC] had tossed us a net, and our job was to place any debris no matter how old or ragged into that net and allow her and the geneticist to sort through the pieces”.

I read it as an audiobook and the reader was also lovely.

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🇺🇸 The National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) has authorized The CEU Shop  to offer up to 0.84 CEUs or 8.40 Category 1 contact hours for the activity Book Club – This Boy We Made. The American Board of Genetic Counseling (ABGC) will accept CEUs earned at this program for the purposes of genetic counselor recertification.

🇨🇦 This conference has been approved by the Canadian Board of Genetic Counselling (CBGC) for 8.4 CECs. Use coupon code “NOCEU” when purchasing if you ONLY want to claim Canadian CECs. If you do your attendance will not be submitted to NSGC for CEUs.