The All of Us Research Program is a historic effort to collect and study data from one million or more people living in the United States. The program began national enrollment in 2018 and is expected to last at least 10 years. The core objective of the program is to build the evidence base to facilitate healthcare’s increasing use of precision medicine. But it might also end up serving as an opportunity to track the path of herd immunity to the Coronavirus over time. More about that later- but first lets explore what All of Us is all about.
Too often, health care is one size fits all. Treatments meant for the “average” patient may not work well for individual people. Health care providers may find it difficult to coordinate care among specialists or to access all of a patient’s health information. Researchers may spend lots of time and resources creating new databases for every study.
All of Us is working to improve health care through research. Unlike research studies that focus on one disease or group of people, All of Us is building a diverse database that can inform thousands of studies on a variety of health conditions. This creates more opportunities to:
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Know the risk factors for certain diseases
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Figure out which treatments work best for people of different backgrounds
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Connect people with the right clinical studies for their needs
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Learn how technologies can help us take steps to be healthier
All of Us is creating a database on the All of Us Research Program website. Everyone can use this database to make discoveries. There are different levels of access. Some information is visible to the public. Some information can only be seen by approved researchers. The information in the database that anyone can see will be about the group of participants. For example, it might tell the average age of the people who have joined the All of Us Research Program. It will not include information about individual people.
Only researchers approved by the All of Us Research Program will be allowed to see data from individual participants. The data will not include your name or other information that directly identifies you. These researchers may be from anywhere in the world. They may work for commercial companies, like drug companies. The research may be on many different topics.
Will one be about COVID-19?
The program started collecting bio samples in 2018. I was one of the first participants in the program, and I provided samples for the program a couple of years ago. That means that the bio samples are being collected before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
That means researchers might be able to use blood samples from before, during and after the pandemic to track the progression of the disease (and the pathway toward herd immunity) by looking at IgG antibodies over time- producing an epidemiological record how, where, among whom the virus spread.
You can participate in All of Us too. It’s simple and easy. You can sign up directly through JoinAllofUs.org or at a participating health care provider organization
Check it out!