All of Us Research Program

If you join, you will be contributing to research that may improve health for everyone and for future generations. Our goal is to understand how different factors together affect health and speed up research to develop new and tailored treatments. Here are some examples of what researchers might be able to discover from their research:

• Better tests to see if people are sick or are at risk of getting sick
• Better mobile apps to encourage healthy habits
• Better information about which or how much of a medicine is right for each person

Also, you will be able to see your All of Us information, which might be interesting to you. It may help you learn about your health. Adult participants may also learn about their DNA, if they choose to. Participants can share any information they receive from All of Us with their doctor, if they choose. 

Depending on your age, we plan to look at different types of information in your DNA. We expect this will include information about:

• Your genetic ancestry (where your family might have lived hundreds of years ago)
• Your genetic traits, such as why you might love or hate cilantro
• Whether you may have an increased risk of developing a serious health condition, such as cancer or heart disease
• How your body might react to certain medicines
• Other health-related information

As we learn more about DNA, we may be able to add more types of DNA results to this list. 

The All of Us Research Program stores blood, saliva, and urine samples in a secure lab called a biobank. We store DNA information taken from the samples in a secure database at our Data and Research Center. The information we share with researchers does not contain your name or other information that could directly identify you. Also, researchers who want to study samples or DNA information must agree to strict rules before we will share samples with them.

All of Us will not sell your health information to anyone. We also have privacy and security safeguards in place to protect your information and your identity.

Here are a few examples of how we keep your data safe:

• We follow all federal, state, and local laws and regulations for keeping information safe
• We also have Certificates of Confidentiality from the U.S. government. They will help us fight legal demands (such as a subpoena) to give out information that could identify you.
• We have strict internal policies and procedures to make sure your data is not misused
• We store information on secure computers. We limit and keep track of who can see it.
• We have security experts who have done and will keep doing thorough security testing
• We will tell you if there is a risk to your privacy because of a data breach 

Researchers will use the data collected by the All of Us Research Program to study many different diseases and conditions. It is up to each researcher to decide what they study. You can learn more about the research being done at our website, JoinAllofUs.org. 

No. All of Us is a research program. It is not medical care. You can keep your current health care team even if you decide to join the All of Us Research Program. 

Joining the All of Us Research Program is free and won’t cost you anything more than a little bit of your time. All activities are free.  

If we ask you in the future to go to an All of Us partner center to be physically measured and give blood or urine samples and you decide to do it, we will offer you a one-time compensation of $25. It may be in the form of cash, a gift card or an electronic voucher.