NIH Awards $9.7 Million to Advance the Use of All of Us Research Program Dataset

November 21, 2023
Woman works at laptop computer building code for research while sitting next to another woman at a computer.

Awards support 26 two-year projects on a broad range of disease areas funded across NIH

The National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program and 10 partner Institutes, Centers, and Offices have funded 26 research projects to support novel analyses and tool development using All of Us’ data. The two-year awards advance impactful research in high-priority mission areas of the NIH.

“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. “This work would not be possible without the NIH-wide support we have received in building a research platform capable of powering countless discoveries.”

Projects include investigations on heart disease risk factors, chronic pain, intersectional mental health challenges, genetic risk factors for different cancers, and more. Additionally, some of these awards have a focus on research methods – either testing novel uses of existing methods, or developing new models and tools for data analysis. After the award period, these tools will be made available to All of Us researchers through the Researcher Workbench. 

The awards expand All of Us’ Extramural Program to Advance Research (EPAR). In 2022, All of Us sponsored 25 research teams through supplemental funding to integrate All of Us data in their currently funded research projects. Together, EPAR awardees are helping to build a network of investigators nationwide who share best practices, solve problems, and form collaborations through the All of Us Researcher Workbench. All of Us looks to this group to provide feedback on ways to improve the utility of its scientific resources, tools, and data. 

“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,” said Schully. “Through EPAR, we are stimulating impactful contributions to medical research.”

About 8,000 researchers are registered to use the All of Us Researcher Workbench and the platform has supported more than 215 peer-reviewed publications, in addition to the 7,600 ongoing projects. 

Funding for the awards, listed below, 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.

Awardee Institution Principal Investigator Project Title Managing Institute
Brigham and Women's Hospital Karen H. Costenbader Elucidating Social Determinants And Mental Health Needs To Achieve Equity In Rheumatic Disease Care NIAMS
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center Burcu Frances Darst Germline Genetics And Risk Of Prostate Cancer In Diverse Populations From The All of Us Research Program NCI
Henry Ford Health and  Michigan State University Health Sciences Hongsheng Gui Assembly And Re-Alignment of HLAGenomic Region and its Implication for Fine-Mapping Suicidality in African Descent Population NIMH
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Samira Asgari Identifying Genetic and Sociodemographic Determinants of Susceptibility to Infectious Diseases in Diverse Population Groups NIMHD
Johns Hopkins University Casey Overby Taylor Real-World Data Estimates of Racial Fairness with Pharmacogenomics-Guided Drug Policy NIMHD
Marquette University Astrida Seja Kaugars Examining the Associations Between Women’s Experiences with Gender-Based Discrimination and Their Mental and Physical Health: an Intersectional Analysis NIMH
Mayo Clinic Rochester Alexej Abyzov Discovering and Analyzing Development and Age-Associated CNAS in the All of Us Cohort NIA
Temple University  Lin Zhu Linking Social-Behavior Contextual Factors and Allostatic Load to Chronic Diseases in Diverse Asian Americans: A Socioecological Approach to Advancing Precision Medicine and Health Equity NIMHD
University of Arizona Jason Hansen Karnes Discovery of Immunogenomic Associations with Disease and Differential Risk Across Diverse Populations NHLBI
University of California Los Angeles Elior Rahmani Subtyping Complex Phenotypes via Contrastive Learning by Leveraging Electronic Health Records NHGRI
University of California, San Diego Rodney Allanigue Gabriel Predictive Models for Opioid Use Disorder Using Genomic, Social, and Clinical Factors NIDA
University of California, San Diego Sally Liu Baxter PAGE-G: Precision Approach Combining Genes and Environment in Glaucoma NEI
University of Chicago Briseis A. Aschebrook-Kilfoy Investigation of the Social Context and Physical Environment on Cardiovascular Disease Disparities in the All of Us Research Program NHLBI
University of Florida Matthew James Gurka Metabolic Syndrome Severity in All of Us: Relationship with Social Determinants of Health and with Long-Term Risk for Cardiovascular Disease NHLBI
University of Florida Caitrin W. McDonough Hypertension Prediction and Identification in All of Us NHLBI
University of Maryland Baltimore Sally Nneoma Adebamowo Leveraging Pleiotropy to Develop Polygenic Risk Scores for Cardiometabolic Diseases NHLBI
University of Maryland Baltimore Jeffrey R. O'Connell Elucidating the Ancestry-Specific Genetic and Environmental Architecture of Cardiometabolic Traits Across All of Us Ethnic Groups NHLBI
University of Miami School of Medicine Matthew Christopher Danzi Creating an Advanced Multi-Ancestral Resource and Tools For Short Tandem Repeat Analysis in the All of Us Researcher Workbench NHGRI
University of Minnesota Rui Zhang Mining Minority Enriched All of Us Data For Innovative Ethnic Specific Risk Prediction Modeling NIMHD
University of Pittsburgh Ariadne M. Letra Leveraging All of Us Data to Unravel the Interconnectedness Between Dental and Systemic Disease NIDCR
University of Wisconsin-Madison Qiongshi Lu Characterizing Pervasive Biases in Genome-Wide Association Study Using Family Health History as Proxy Phenotypes NIA
Vanderbilt University Medical Center Srishti Nayak Investigating the Medical Phenome of Speech-Language Traits: Risk, Resilience, and Opportunities for Intervention NIDCD
Vanderbilt University Medical Center Qingxia Chen DARSaW: Developing, Assessing, and Refining Synthetic Sampling Weights to Improve Generalizability of the All of Us Research Program Data NIMHD
Vanderbilt University Medical Center Evan L. Brittain Impact of Physical Activity, Sleep, and Genetic Background on Cardiovascular Risk in the All of Us Research Program NHLBI
Washington University Emma Covey Johnson Using Genomics and Extensive Phenotyping to Dissect the Relationships Between Substance Use Disorders and Chronic Pain NIDA
Weill Medical Coll of Cornell Univ Mark G. Weiner SMILE-PD: Similarity Matching in Longitudinal Electronic Patient Data NLM