NYC Consortium joins NIH in launching the All of Us Research Program to advance precision medicine

NEW YORK, May 2, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On May 6, the National Institutes of Health will open national enrollment for the All of Us Research Program—a momentous effort to advance individualized prevention, treatment and care for people of all backgrounds.  A consortium that includes Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Weill Cornell Medicine, NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem and NewYork-Presbyterian is spearheading enrollment in New York City. People ages 18 and older, regardless of health status, will be able to enroll. The official launch date will be marked in New York City at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem with a community health fair, speaker's program, as well as an online event.

Volunteers will join more than 25,000 participants across the United States who have already enrolled in All of Us as part of a year-long beta test to prepare for the program's national launch. The overall aim is to enroll 1 million or more volunteers and oversample communities that have been underrepresented in research to make the program the largest, most diverse resource of its kind.

"The time is now to transform how we conduct research—with participants as partners—to shed new light on how to stay healthy and manage disease in more personalized ways. This is what we can accomplish through All of Us," said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.

Precision medicine is an emerging approach to disease treatment and prevention that considers differences in people's lifestyles, environments and biological makeup, including genes. By partnering with 1 million diverse people who share information about themselves over many years, the All of Us Research Program will enable research to more precisely prevent and treat a variety of health conditions.

"All of us are unique, but today we live mostly in an era of 'one-size-fits-all' medicine," said Eric Dishman, director of the All of Us Research Program. "I'm alive today because of precision medicine and I think everyone deserves that same opportunity no matter the color of your skin, your economic status, your age or your sex or gender. In other words, it will truly take all of us."

All of Us seeks to transform the relationship between researchers and participants, bringing them together as partners to inform the program's directions, goals and responsible return of research information. Participants will be able to access their own health information, summary data about the entire participant community and information about studies and findings that come from All of Us.  

"The All of Us Research Program marks an amazing opportunity to bring together the communities we serve and our research community to advance health," said David Goldstein, Ph.D., NYC Consortium principal investigator and John E. Borne Professor of Medical and Surgical Research in Genetics and Development and director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. "This bold program will work with our communities to make sure not only that the promise of precision medicine is realized, but that it is done so in partnership with the community."

Participants are asked to share different types of health and lifestyle information, including through online surveys and electronic health records (EHRs), which will continue to be collected over the course of the program. At different times over the coming months and years, some participants will be asked to visit a local partner site to provide blood and urine samples and to have basic physical measurements taken, such as height and weight. To ensure that the program gathers information from all types of people, especially those who have been underrepresented in research, not everyone will be asked to give physical measures and samples. In the future, participants may be invited to share data through wearable devices and to join follow-up research studies, including clinical trials.

"At Weill Cornell Medicine, we are dedicated to translating our groundbreaking biomedical discoveries into the most advanced care for our patients and the community," said All of Us Research Program New York Consortium Co-Principal Investigators Rainu Kaushal, M.D., the Nanette Laitman Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Healthcare Policy and Research at Weill Cornell Medicine, and M. Elizabeth Ross, M.D., Ph.D., the Nathan Cummings Professor in Neurology and director of the Center for Neurogenetics in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine. "We are grateful to the NIH for its bold and visionary leadership in precision medicine, and excited to embark on this important project."

"NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem provides essential care to our community in Harlem. Many of our patients suffer from chronic diseases in higher numbers than other populations," said Rhonda Trousdale, principal investigator at NYC Health + Hospital/Harlem and division chief of endocrinology. "We hope that the All of Us Research Program will harness the power of precision medicine to provide future generations with a path to health."

"NewYork-Presbyterian looks forward to offering our patients and the communities we serve the opportunity to participate in this groundbreaking research, which we believe will lead to significant advances in clinical care," said David Alge, senior vice president, Community and Population Health at NewYork-Presbyterian. "As an academic medical center serving one of the most diverse populations in the U.S., we welcome the opportunity to collaborate with the NIH and our affiliated academic medical schools, Columbia and Weill Cornell Medicine, on this historic research program to advance precision medicine."

Also in future phases of the program, children will be able to enroll, and the program will add more data types, such as genetic data. In addition, data from the program will be broadly accessible for research purposes. Ultimately, the All of Us Research program will be a rich and open data resource for traditional academic researchers as well as citizen scientists—and everyone in between.

NIH has funded more than 100 organizations throughout the United States to be partners in the program, including the NYC Consortium.  Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Weill Cornell Medicine, NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem and NewYork-Presbyterian are leading enrollment efforts in the New York City area, and will partner with participants over the long term to facilitate return of results and identify research questions that may be desired by the community.

On the program's May 6 launch date, the All of Us Research Program will host special events in diverse communities around the country.

NIH Director Dr. Collins will officially launch the program at the New York City event at Abyssinian Baptist Church. The NYC Consortium will host a free, family-friendly community event on Sunday, May 6, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Abyssinian and will feature health screenings, interactive health demos, entertainment, music, healthy food and more. Attendees can begin the enrollment process at the event.

People also may take part in social media activities (#JoinAllofUs) or tune in at https://Launch.JoinAllofUs.org to watch speakers across the country talk about precision medicine and the power of volunteering for research.

To learn more about the program and how to join, please visit https://www.JoinAllofUs.org.

"All of Us" is a registered service mark of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).

Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Columbia University Irving Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, preclinical, and clinical research; medical and health sciences education; and patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Columbia University Irving Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest faculty medical practices in the Northeast. For more information, visit cumc.columbia.edu or columbiadoctors.org.

Weill Cornell Medicine
Weill Cornell Medicine is committed to excellence in patient care, scientific discovery and the education of future physicians in New York City and around the world. The doctors and scientists of Weill Cornell Medicine — faculty from Weill Cornell Medical College, Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, and Weill Cornell Physician Organization—are engaged in world-class clinical care and cutting-edge research that connect patients to the latest treatment innovations and prevention strategies. Located in the heart of the Upper East Side's scientific corridor, Weill Cornell Medicine's powerful network of collaborators extends to its parent university Cornell University; to Qatar, where Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar offers a Cornell University medical degree; and to programs in Tanzania, Haiti, Brazil, Austria and Turkey. Weill Cornell Medicine faculty provide comprehensive patient care at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Queens and NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. Weill Cornell Medicine is also affiliated with Houston Methodist. For more information, visit weill.cornell.edu.

About NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem
NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem is a 282-bed hospital that provides a broad array of preventive, primary and acute care services including general medicine and medical subspecialties, general surgery and surgical subspecialties, infectious diseases, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics and neonatology; burn and critical care; radiology imaging and nuclear medicine; rehabilitation medicine and physical, speech and occupational therapies; psychiatry and substance abuse services; dental and oral surgery, and emergency adult and pediatric services. We are an Area-Wide Burn Center and Level I Trauma, with Centers of Excellence for Bariatric Surgery, Breast Imaging and Sexual Assault Forensics, a designated Stroke and AIDS Center, a World Health Organization's UNICEF Designated Baby Friendly Hospital. NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem is a member of the NYC Health + Hospitals health care system. For more information, visit www.nychealthandhospitals.org/Harlem or call (212) 939-1000.

NewYork-Presbyterian
NewYork-Presbyterian is one of the nation's most comprehensive, integrated academic healthcare delivery systems, whose organizations are dedicated to providing the highest quality, most compassionate care and service to patients in the New York metropolitan area, nationally, and throughout the globe. In collaboration with two renowned medical schools, Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, NewYork-Presbyterian is consistently recognized as a leader in medical education, groundbreaking research and innovative, patient-centered clinical care.

NewYork-Presbyterian has four major divisions:

• NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is ranked #1 in the New York metropolitan area by U.S. News and World Report and repeatedly named to the Honor Roll of "America's Best Hospitals."
• NewYork-Presbyterian Regional Hospital Network comprises hospitals and other facilities in the New York metropolitan region.
• NewYork-Presbyterian Physician Services, which connects medical experts with patients in their communities.
• NewYork-Presbyterian Community and Population Health, encompassing ambulatory care network sites and community healthcare initiatives, including NewYork Quality Care, the Accountable Care Organization jointly established by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia.

For more information, visit www.nyp.org and find us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

SOURCE Columbia University Medical Center

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