The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced its first four community partner awards to begin building a national network of recruiters for its All of Us Research Program, part of the Precision Medicine Initiative.
This initial group of awardees will receive a combined $1.7 million this fiscal year, with future support planned pending the availability of funds, the NIH stated. These awardees will raise awareness about the program among seniors, Hispanics and Latinos, African Americans and the LGBTQ community, to complement other outreach efforts of the program. NIH anticipates making additional funding awards for community partners in the future, drawing on the lessons learned from this initial set of awardees.
All of Us is an effort to gather data over time from 1 million or more people living in the United States, with the ultimate goal of accelerating research and improving health. According to the NIH, unlike research studies that are focused on a specific disease or population, All of Us will serve as a national research resource to inform thousands of studies, covering a wide variety of health conditions. Researchers will use data from the program to learn more about how individual differences in lifestyle, environment and biological makeup can influence health and disease.
The first community partners are FiftyForward, the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, the Delta Research and Educational Foundation and
FiftyForward, (formerly Senior Citizens, Inc.), based in Nashville, Tennessee, will share information about All of Us at affiliated lifelong learning centers and through home-based services to reach urban and rural, economically disadvantaged and older adult populations.
The National Alliance for Hispanic Health, based in Washington, D.C., will launch bilingual (English and Spanish) national and local initiatives to promote All of Us in Hispanic communities and work to overcome potential challenges to participation.
The Delta Research and Educational Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., in collaboration with Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and the National Council of Negro Women, will launch a national health initiative called “Research Matters: Creating Possibilities to Achieve Health and Wellness for the All of Us Research Program.”
The San Francisco General Hospital Foundation will form a national network to engage sexual and gender minorities across the country in All of Us. The team will provide input on enrollment materials and research plans, develop customized educational programs and study best practices in the dissemination of research results to support retention.
“Community partners are integral to All of Us,” Eric Dishman, director of All of Us at NIH, said in a statement. “This first-of-its-kind program seeks to include people from all walks of life, and these community partner awardees were selected to help achieve that goal.”
