All of Us UArizona-Banner Research Program Announces Project Seed Winners

The All of us Research Program The University of Arizona-Banner Health announces a portfolio of seed project awards that will use the program’s large dataset to conduct health research. The purpose of this All of us The UArizona-Banner research project’s request was to inform the development of alternative precision health strategies and fuel medical discovery.

The All of us represents a unique opportunity for scholars as it reflects the rich diversity of the United States. More than 80% of the data comes from communities traditionally underrepresented in biomedical research, 50% of which are underrepresented racial and ethnic communities.

“The depth of genomic data from these diverse participants, coupled with electronic health records and social determinants of health data, allows researchers to initiate a wide variety of new studies in the All of us Researcher Workbench,” said Jason Karnes, PharmD, PhDdirector of scientific programs All of us UArizona-Banner and Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Practice and Science at the UArizona R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy.

The following seed project awardees contribute to a growing and diverse community of researchers conducting scholarly inquiry using the All of us Research program dataset:

• “Comparing Health Care Access and Utilization Among Underrepresented Groups in Urban and Rural Colorado Communities: Initial Results from the All of us Research Agenda” – Principal Investigator: Michael Bradfield, MD, MPH, Banner Health, All of us Research Program – Colorado Medical Director
• “All mothers: the confluence of OXTR variation and social determinants of health on the risk of postpartum hemorrhage” – Principal Investigator: Elise Erickson, PhD, CNM, FACNMAssistant Professor, Division of Biobehavioral Health Sciences, UArizona College of Nursing
• “To study asthma-related phenotypes by dissecting novel functional genetic variants associated with asthma susceptibility, asthma severity, and exacerbations in the All of us Research Program” – Principal Investigator: Xingnan Li, PhDAssociate Professor, Division of Genetics, Genomics, and Precision Medicine, Department of Medicine, UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson
• ” Benefit All of us to gain biological insight into how variation at MFAP2 shapes human biology” – Principal Investigator: Casey Romanoski, Ph.D.Associate Professor, Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, College of Medicine – Tucson
• “Discovery of immunogenic associations with disease and differential risk in diverse populations” – Principal Investigator: Travis Wheeler, Ph.D.Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy Science and Practice, Coit College of Pharmacy

An initiative of the National Institutes of Health, All of us aims to create one of the largest and most diverse databases of health information of its kind by bringing together genetic, lifestyle and environmental information from at least 1 million people , with a focus on increasing diversity in health research. Currently, All of us UArizona-Banner leads the nation in enrollment with more than 57,000 attendees.

To All of us UArizona-Banner in Arizona and Colorado, registered researchers can access health data to conduct studies. More than 3,000 research projects are underway in the All of us Researcher Workbench, focusing on topics such as socioeconomic implications on cancer outcomes, racial and ethnic factors in cardiovascular disease, and sociocultural influences on COVID-19 outcomes, among others.

“These studies include the discovery of new genetic variants, genome-wide and phenome-wide association studies to determine the link between genetics and various diseases, research into polygenic risk scores that can be used to predict disease with genetics, and studies of ancestral disease and genetic influences versus social and environmental influences and their impact on health,” Dr. Karnes said.

As a government-funded program committed to open data and science, All of us will make data widely available to researchers of all kinds, including citizen scientists, to support thousands of studies on a wide range of health topics. To date, more than 335,000 All of us participants have completed the initial stages of the program, including the provision of biological samples for analysis. A recent release of new data includes nearly 100,000 whole genomes and 165,000 genome-wide tables, as well as participant data on the social determinants of health enabling new research opportunities.

To learn more or to register, visit AllofUsAZ.org or call 877-268-2684.

The University of Arizona-Banner Health Program is supported by the National Institutes of Health All of us Research Program Funding Award OT2OD026549 with previous awards UG3OD023171-01 and UG3OD023171-01S1 and CEAL Funding Award OT2-HL156812.

“All of us” and the All of us logo are registered service marks of the US Department of Health and Human Services.