Happy New Year from All of Us! The new year is a time to reflect on past achievements and look forward to what’s in store. This year, the All of Us Research Program will celebrate its five-year anniversary in May 2023. There will be lots of things to look forward to as we celebrate. We’ll keep returning DNA results to participants. We’ll continue to share new research. We’ll also share program updates each week. Turn on notifications for All of Us’ social media accounts (Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook) to follow the series #Reasons4Research. The series will highlight the program’s achievements and work toward our goal of recruiting at least a million All of Us participants.
All of Us researchers are another important part of the program. They turn the data from information you share with the program into health discoveries. More than 3,930 researchers are part of All of Us right now. These researchers come from many different communities, backgrounds, and institutions. Who are all these researchers? What types of research are they doing? Learn more about them below.
Secure Research
The researchers who use All of Us data come from almost 500 different universities, health care organizations, and nonprofits around the country. No matter where these researchers are from, they need to go through several steps to use data available in the All of Us Researcher Workbench. The program first sets up data use agreements with the researcher’s organization. All of Us trains researchers to conduct their research in a way that makes sure that the information you share is treated responsibly and respectfully.
All of Us also makes the data itself secure. Personal information—like your name—is never part of the data shared. All of Us also stores your information in a protected central database. Researchers are not allowed to download your data to their own personal computer. Researchers also have to agree that they will not try to find out who you are before they can access the data. Many other measures are in place to make sure your data is safe and can’t be misused.
Different Researchers, Different Discoveries
Different researchers can use the data you share to make different types of discoveries. Some researchers are biologists who study the body, diseases, and treatment. These researchers can use information about the blood or saliva samples that are shared with the program to study cells or systems in the body.
Blood and saliva samples contain DNA. Researchers who study DNA are called geneticists. Geneticists using All of Us data can use information from samples to learn how DNA is related to disease. They may find differences in DNA that can make someone more or less likely to have a certain disease. The Researcher Workbench currently includes data from 372,000 participants. This rich dataset now has more than 593 million unique genetic variants.
Researchers can also study health trends across large groups of people. Epidemiologists try to find the source and cause of disease. For example, epidemiologists can use participant information from All of Us surveys or electronic health records (EHRs) to understand who gets a disease and why.
Other researchers can also try to understand how behavior and social factors affect health. Some of these researchers are known as public health researchers. They study why certain groups of people have poorer quality health care or less access to care. They can then use this information to study how quality and access to care affect disease treatment across groups of people.
Your Data Makes All of Us Possible
Your data is not something we take for granted. There would be no All of Us without you. As the program keeps growing, we will keep using your data responsibly and share what we learn along the way.
Thank you for joining All of Us. We look forward to another year of discoveries, thanks to your partnership and trust.
