The nationwide research program All of Us, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, has now enrolled more than 100,000 participants in a historic effort to advance individualized disease prevention, treatment and care for people of all backgrounds. The goal is to enroll 1 million or more participants nationally.
Emory University, which is part of the SouthEast Enrollment Center (SEEC) of All of Us, has now enrolled more than 1,300 participants since its launch last year, primarily Emory staff, faculty, students and patients. The Emory section of the research study is being conducted at three clinical locations – cardiology clinics in the Emory Clinic, outpatient clinics at Emory University Hospital, and in an Emory clinic on W. Ponce de Leon Ave.
In addition to Emory the SEEC network includes Morehouse School of Medicine, the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the OneFlorida Clinical Research Consortium led by the University of Florida.
People ages 18 and older, regardless of health status, can enroll. The aim of All of Us is to involve individuals from all communities, including those who have been underrepresented in other research studies, to make the program the largest, most diverse resource of its kind.
Emory’s All of Us program is led by Michael Zwick, PhD, assistant vice president for research in Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center, along with Alvaro Alonso, MD, PhD, from Rollins School of Public Health, and Emory School of Medicine faculty Greg Martin, MD, Arshed Quyyumi, MD, and Andrew Post, PhD.
“We wish to raise awareness and encourage everyone to participate in All of Us,” says Alonso. “Participants are contributing to the future development of new precision medicine treatments for disease. In addition, they receive access to their own data, which might be interesting to them.”
“The program aims to engage participants for 10 years or more. Participants can access a website that shows them how their data compares to that of other participants. They also will learn about findings and treatments that result from All of Us. Participants should know that All of Us uses high quality security technology to help keep participant data safe, and ensure data is used ethically and responsibly.”
“All of Us has the potential to speed the ongoing transformation of our health care systems, empower individuals to actively manage their health and health care, and promote critical research that can improve the lives and health of the people of Georgia,” says Zwick.
Precision medicine is an emerging approach to disease treatment and prevention that considers differences in people’s lifestyles, environments and biological makeup, including genes. By partnering with 1 million diverse people who share information about themselves over many years, the All of Us Research Program will enable research to more precisely prevent and treat a variety of health conditions.
Participants are asked to share different types of health and lifestyle information, including through online surveys and electronic health records (EHRs), which will continue to be collected over the course of the program. Some participants are asked to provide blood and urine samples and to have basic physical measurements recorded. Participants may also share data through wearable devices and, in the future, may be asked to join follow-up research studies, including clinical trials.
De-identified data from the program will be broadly accessible for research purposes. Ultimately, the All of Us Research program will be a rich and open data resource for traditional academic researchers as well as citizen scientists and everyone in between.
All Of Us at Emory
To learn more about Georgia enrollment in the project through Emory, email: allofus@emory.edu or call 404-778-1284
Follow us on Twitter: @AllofUsEmory
To learn more about the national program, please visit JoinAllofUs.org.
"All of Us" is a registered service mark of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).