NIH Funding to Advance “All of Us” Research Program Dataset Use

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded $9.7 million to 26 two-year projects that will advance high-priority research by leveraging the All of Us Research Program dataset.

Each project will prioritize tool development and novel analyses across multiple disease areas with support from ten NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs).

“We are maximizing the contributions our participants make to advance research by supporting the development of world-class tools that can be used to explore the data and accelerate medical research,” said Sheri Schully, PhD, deputy chief medical and scientific officer of All of Us, in the press release. “This work would not be possible without the NIH-wide support we have received in building a research platform capable of powering countless discoveries.”

Some of the projects will investigate health conditions like chronic pain, heart disease risk, mental health, and cancer, while others will focus on research methods or developing data analytics tools.

The funding was awarded to 26 projects from over 20 institutions, some of which include: “Elucidating Social Determinants And Mental Health Needs To Achieve Equity In Rheumatic Disease Care” from Brigham and Women's Hospital; “Germline Genetics And Risk Of Prostate Cancer In Diverse Populations From The All of Us Research Program” from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center; “Assembly And Re-Alignment of HLAGenomic Region and its Implication for Fine-Mapping Suicidality in African Descent Population” from Henry Ford Health and Michigan State University Health Sciences; “Identifying Genetic and Sociodemographic Determinants of Susceptibility to Infectious Diseases in Diverse Population Groups” from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and “Real-World Data Estimates of Racial Fairness with Pharmacogenomics-Guided Drug Policy” from Johns Hopkins University.

Following the two-year award period, tools developed via these projects will be made available to researchers through the All of Us Researcher Workbench.

The funding expands on existing efforts by All of Us’ Extramural Program to Advance Research (EPAR). Last year, the program sponsored 25 research teams to integrate data from All of Us into existing research projects.

In doing so, EPAR awardees have helped to build a national network for researchers to collaborate, solve problems, and share best practices using the All of Us Researcher Workbench, the press release noted. These researchers then provide feedback to enhance All of Us’ resources and tools.

“Since launching the Researcher Workbench three years ago, we have continuously added new data and features to help researchers advance our understanding of health and disease,” Schully stated. “Through EPAR, we are stimulating impactful contributions to medical research.”

Funding for the most recent round of awards was provided by All of Us, the National Eye Institute, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Library of Medicine, Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, and the Office of Data Science Strategy.

This funding builds on other recent work to maximize All of Us data use.

Last month, the All of Us Research Program awarded $30 million to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus to establish the new Center for Linkage and Acquisition of Data.

The center is set to help research teams investigate drivers of disease by connecting new data streams with existing All of Us participant data. During the 18-month award period, researchers will work to acquire mortality and claims data for the project, in addition to environmental information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Environmental Justice Index.

Through these efforts, stakeholders hope to close information gaps in All of Us data and make the Researcher Workbench more valuable for clinical research.