The National Institutes of Health’s nationwide All of Us research program is establishing a Southern California Consortium to expand its recruitment efforts.
The NIH has awarded Hoda Anton-Culver, Ph.D., a Donald Bren Professor and Distinguished Professor of medicine at UC Irvine, an initial $4 million for the consortium’s first year with renewal potential every year for four additional years.
Anton-Culver will lead the All of Us Southern California Consortium along with investigators from Loma Linda University Health (LLU Health) and MemorialCare. The consortium will enroll participants that reflect the diversity of the U.S., including people who identify with communities historically underrepresented in research, such as those of minority race and ethnicity groups, socioeconomic levels, gender identity and sexual orientation, cultural diversity, and occupational and environmental exposure.
Enrollment locations at UCI Health, MemorialCare and LLU Health make joining the research program easy and accessible for patients and people living in the local communities.
“All of Us has taken a major step toward advancing personalized medicine and improving our understanding of various health conditions by studying a diverse and large population,” said Anton-Culver, in a statement. “Its comprehensive approach to gathering data, including genetic, environmental, and lifestyle information, can lead to more customized health care solutions and treatments tailored to individual needs.”
Launched in 2018, the All of Us Research Program is a major initiative by the NIH to gather health data from one million or more people living in the United States. The program is building one of the most diverse health databases in history to accelerate precision medicine research and improve health by considering individual differences in lifestyle, environment and biology. By participating, individuals can contribute to a repository of data for researchers to better understand health and disease, and potentially develop more personalized approaches to treatments and interventions.
The program has already enrolled more than 820,000 participants nationwide. It is one of the largest, most diverse databases of its kind with over 80 percent of participants identifying with a community that is underrepresented in biomedical research, including approximately 45 percent who are underrepresented by race and ethnicity. The establishment of the All of Us Southern California Consortium builds upon the past six-year success of UC Irvine as an enrollment partner of the All of Us Research Program. Since 2018, UC Irvine has enrolled more than 28,000 participants.
“The program’s commitment to including participants from all backgrounds aligns with the broader goals of ensuring that medical research benefits everyone, particularly underrepresented communities,” said Michael Stamos, M.D., dean of the UC Irvine School of Medicine, who was the first All of Us participant from UC Irvine. “Being part of such a large, nationwide initiative provides tremendous opportunities for collaboration among researchers, healthcare providers, and institutions. This can accelerate scientific discoveries and innovations.”
There are currently nearly 12,000 researchers nationwide registered to use the All of Us data; of those, more than 150 researchers are from UC Irvine.
Earlier this spring, researchers at several academic medical centers announced that they had been awarded a $5.6 million grant for the first year of a five-year project to establish the Coast-to-Coast Consortium (C2C) for the All of Us Research Program.
C2C will build on the foundation set by the California Precision Medicine Consortium (CAPMC), established in 2018, which enrolled more than 65,500 participants to the program.
Yale University collaborates with C2C, including the University of California, San Diego; the University of California, Davis; the University of California, San Francisco; Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the University of Southern California, and the Puerto Rico Consortium for Clinical Investigation, in its research efforts.
In addition, Saint Louis University (SLU) and SSM Health are joining the All of Us program.
Funded by the NIH via a subcontract with the All of Us Trans America Consortium for Health (TACH), SLU researchers are launching the program in St. Louis. While the initial funding is for five years, the program is designed to follow participants over the long-term, and researchers expect the initiative to continue for up to 10 years or longer.
“This is exactly the right time to embark on this landmark program because we now have a better understanding of genetics,” said Richard Grucza, Ph.D., professor of family and community medicine and health outcomes research at Saint Louis University School of Medicine and co-principal investigator of the program at SLU, in a statement.
“We have the technological capability to monitor people over time,” Grucza said. “We have electronic health records so we can get data quickly. All of this data will accelerate precision medicine and improve health, taking into account all kinds of contributions to your health. Not just your diet and exercise, but where you live, what kind of lifestyle you have, your profession, your socioeconomic status, your genetic markers.”
