Some health researchers target public health with precision medicine

A vision of applying data to learn about and more closely target interventions toward specific populations—precision public health—mirrors a sentiment expressed by the All of Us Research Program.

Though operated as a program under the Precision Medicine Initiative, the All of Us Research Program is in many ways aligned with public health’s goals, according to Dr. Dara Richardson-Heron, chief engagement officer for the project.

All of Us is working to collect medical histories, lifestyle information and genetic data from 1 million people across the U.S., with the ultimate goal of serving as a national data resource for researchers. Diversity was a requirement of the program under the Cures Act, which said it needed to recruit a diverse cohort and consider social factors that might contribute to health disparities.

Roughly half of the 175,000 core participants that All of Us enrolled in its first year were non-white, according to a report All of Us program investigators published this summer.

“Our goal as a program is to design and create a database so that researchers can really do research on a population that’s reflective of the U.S. population,” Richardson-Heron said. “Our program is about way more than just genomics, medications and treatment. We want to also learn about resilience and prevention.”