U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
The All of Us Research Program is part of an effort to advance individualized health care by enrolling one million or more participants to contribute their health data over many years. The program aims to reflect the diversity of the United States and to include participants from groups that have been underrepresented in health research in the past. The program is developing custom tools and software to help researchers analyze participant data while keeping information secure. Working together, All of Us researchers, partners, and participants aim to build a better future for health care. Learn more about All of Us.
The goal of All of Us is to speed up health research discoveries, enabling new kinds of individualized health care. To make this possible, the program is building one of the world’s largest and most diverse databases for health research.
By working with participants across the country, collecting many types of information over time, and building a data platform that many researchers can use, All of Us may also shape how people do research in the future.
Unlike research studies that focus on one disease or group of people, All of Us is building a database that can inform thousands of studies on a variety of important health questions. Researchers have found success in using precision medicine to treat certain types of cancers. All of Us seeks to extend that success to many other diseases. Importantly, All of Us may enable research focused not only on treating disease but also on ways to be healthier.
Researchers have seen some progress with precision medicine, which is health care that is based on you as an individual. But it can take many years to understand how a unique variable is linked to a disease or treatment. It takes even more time to develop new ways to prevent and treat disease. By creating a program of the size and scope of All of Us, we hope to speed up these medical breakthroughs.
All of Us offers free, downloadable materials to help you spread the word about the program. See our Multimedia page.
Reach out to All of Us through our Contact Us page.
Yes, anyone living in the United States can participate, though enrollment is initially limited to adults age 18 and up. Certain populations, such as children, will be included later.
Yes, eventually. The inclusion of children has been central to our goals and objectives from the start.
There are special scientific and ethical considerations to take into account when involving children in research. Before proceeding, we must build appropriate protections into the informed consent process and our enrollment and retention plans. We must also develop scientific protocols specific for children.
The All of Us Child Enrollment Scientific Vision Working Group has released its report to inform the development of our strategy for enrollment of children. Read the Working Group’s report. More information will be available in the future.
Yes. We respect that tribes are sovereign and diverse nations, with their own governments and laws. We are committed to engaging with tribal leaders and members across the country to understand their opinions and concerns. This helps us better support research in a way that protects and benefits participants and their American Indian and Alaska Native communities. Learn more about the All of Us Research Program’s work with Tribal Nations.
You can join directly through JoinAllofUs.org or with participating health care provider organizations. Enrollment is open to all eligible adults who live in the United States. Read an overview of how to join.
People join for many reasons. You might join to:
- Learn more about your health, including your DNA. This will include, for example, information about genetic traits and ancestry, potential increased risk of developing certain diseases, or how your body might react to certain medicines.
- Help improve the health of your communities and future generations.
- Help researchers find the best ways for people to stay healthy.
- Help researchers one day create better tests and treatments.
The longer you stay involved with All of Us, the more you can learn about yourself and help speed up health research and medical breakthroughs.
If you decide to join All of Us, we will ask you to share different kinds of information over time. We will ask you basic information like your name and where you live. We will ask you questions about your health, family, home, and work. If you have an electronic health record, we may ask for access. We may ask you to go to a local clinic or drug store for a free appointment with us. At this appointment, we would measure your weight, height, hips, and waist, as well as your blood pressure and heart rate. We might ask you to give samples, such as blood or urine, at the appointment.
You will be able to choose how frequently we contact you. From time to time, we may send you new surveys or offer other ways for you to share information about your health.
All of Us is committed to making sure data are kept private. We also want to make sure that data are not misused. The All of Us Research Program:
- Follows all federal, state, and local laws and rules for keeping data safe
- Has strict policies and procedures to prevent misuse of data. See the Privacy and Trust Principles and Data Security Policy Principles and Framework.
- Has Certificates of Confidentiality from the U.S. government. These will help the program fight legal demands (such as a subpoena) to give out information that could identify a participant.
- Continues to test the security of our databases
- Will tell participants if there is a risk to their privacy because of a data breach
- Stores data on protected computers. This keeps track of and limits who can see it.
- Removes personal details that could identify participants from the data
- Requires researchers to agree to follow data use rules, including promising they will not try to identify participants
We will create a database on the All of Us Research Program website. Everyone can use this database to make discoveries. There are different levels of access. Some information is visible to the public. Some information can only be seen by approved researchers. The information in the database that anyone can see will be about the group of participants. For example, it might tell the average age of the people who have joined the All of Us Research Program. It will not include information about individual people.
Only researchers approved by the All of Us Research Program will be allowed to see data from individual participants. The data will not include your name or other information that directly identifies you. These researchers may be from anywhere in the world. They may work for commercial companies, like drug companies. The research may be on many different topics.
Visit the Funding and Partners page for details on funded projects, current and past funding opportunities, and relevant policy information.
While many programs share one or two characteristics of All of Us, it is the combination of all the elements below that makes All of Us a unique and unprecedented research effort:
• Our participants reflect the rich diversity of America, including volunteers of many races and ethnicities, age groups, geographic regions, gender identities, sexual orientations, and health statuses. We aim to enroll one million or more participants over the course of the program.
• With All of Us, participants are true partners—not subjects, with ongoing opportunities to help shape the program with their input. Further, information is shared with both researchers and participants.
• As a government-funded program committed to open data and science, All of Us makes data broadly accessible to researchers of all kinds to support thousands of studies across a wide range of different health topics.
• Other large research programs collect limited types of samples or data, often focused on a specific disease. All of Us gathers blood, urine, and saliva samples; physical measurements; electronic health records; survey information about participants’ health histories, family medical histories, lifestyles, and communities; and wearable data to get a more complete picture of human health across many conditions.
The All of Us Research Program is publicly funded, with resources appropriated each year by the U.S. Congress. The 21st Century Cures Act, passed in December 2016, authorized a total of $1.5 billion over ten years for the program. These funds, in addition to discretionary appropriations the program receives, are subject to the annual appropriations process.
