Partners HealthCare and Boston Medical Center have partnered with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and have announced today the national launch of the All of Us Research Program on May 6, 2018 across the United States. The two organizations will implement the All of Us Research Program in the region and collaborate as ‘All of Us New England.’
The All of Us Research Program is a bold effort to gather data over time from 1 million or more people living in the United States, with the goal of accelerating research and improving health. Researchers will use data from the program to fuel discoveries for a wide variety of health conditions, to learn more about the impact of individual differences in lifestyle, environment and biological makeup. All of Us participants play an integral role in how we will approach improving health and treating disease in the future.
The national launch of the All of Us Research Program on May 6, 2018 will include events across the country and an online experience at https://launch.joinallofus.org/ that will allow members of the public to take part in the launch, wherever they are. With the national launch of the All of Us Research Program, people from across the country, ages 18 and up, will be invited to participate by signing up at https://www.joinallofus.org.
“All of Us will create a unique longitudinal cohort, building on the tradition of cohorts like the Framingham Heart Study and the Nurses’ Health Study that have contributed so much to our understanding of human health, by including a wide range of data from surveys, mobile sensors, apps, biomarkers and genetic markers,” said principal investigator Elizabeth Karlson, MD, MS, director of rheumatic disease epidemiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS).
“By engaging a diverse patient population, we are offering people the opportunity to participate in one of the most far-reaching research initiatives of our time to improve the health of future generations of people in every community,” said principal investigator George O’Connor, MD, director of the Adult Asthma Program at Boston Medical Center and professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. “It’s a mission that is resonating with our patients and staff.”
“All of Us is groundbreaking not only for the data that will be provided to researchers, but also for including participants as partners in every step of the program,” said principal investigator Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD, associate chief of research in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and professor of psychiatry at HMS. “By engaging and retaining participants over 10 years or more, All of Us hopes to build trust in communities that have been underrepresented in medical research and involve them in shaping a new model in which information will be shared with them about their health.”
All of Us New England is one of several participating health care provider organizations partnered with the All of Us Research Program, and comprises Partners HealthCare and its founding hospitals, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, with Boston Medical Center. All of Us New England was awarded initial funding to begin recruitment and build infrastructure in October 2016.
“One of the most inspiring elements of the program is the dedication to health equity. We are making sure people from all backgrounds benefit from precision medicine research,” said co-investigator Cheryl Clark, MD, ScD, director of health equity research & intervention at the BWH Center for Community Health and Healthy Equity and assistant professor of medicine at HMS.
The All of Us Research Program is currently recruiting participants through All of Us New England at the following locations: Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Medical Center, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Partners HealthCare at Assembly Row, Codman Square Health Center, the Phyllis Jen Center for Primary Care, Brookside Community Health Center, and MGH Chelsea HealthCare Center, with recruitment to expand to additional locations in the coming weeks.
All of Us New England is led by Principal Investigator Jordan Smoller, MD, SD and co-PIs Elizabeth Karlson, MD, MS, Shawn Murphy, MD, PhD, George O’Connor, MD and Scott Weiss, MD. Engaging diverse communities is a core component of All of Us and All of Us New England’s engagement, communications and retention efforts, which are led by Tracy Battaglia, MD, MPH, Cheryl Clark, MD, ScD, Susan Edgman-Levitan, PA and Dean Xerras, MD.
All of Us New England has expertise in engaging racial and ethnic minority populations who have been historically underrepresented in biomedical research, including Hispanic and Latino, African-American, LGBTQ, rural, and lower-income communities. All of Us New England is also well positioned to enroll over time other populations that are often under-represented in research, such as those with mental illness or drug or alcohol addiction. All of Us New England will continue to ensure underserved communities are equal partners in All of Us through ongoing engagement and retention efforts, and guidance from the Partners HealthCare Diversity & Inclusion Officer, Dani Monroe, the MGH Community Access, Recruitment, and Engagement (CARE) Research Center, led by Jonathan Jackson, PhD, and Community Advisory Panels at both Partners HealthCare and Boston Medical Center.
To learn more, please visit joinallofus.org.
Precision Medicine Initiative, All of Us, the All of Us logo, and “The Future of Health Begins with You” are service marks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
