Inclusivity in data will lead to improved health outcomes

Inclusivity in data will lead to improved health outcomes

UC Irvine will lead Southern California consortium of national research project All of Us

IN THE NEWS: The key to All of Us, a national research effort to collect and study the health data of more than 1 million Americans, is its inclusivity, says Hoda Anton-Culver, PhD, a Donald Bren Professor and Distinguished Professor of medicine at UC Irvine.

Since 2018, UC Irvine has enrolled 28,000 participants who voluntarily shared their health records, physical measurements and DNA with researchers to help advance medical knowledge. More than 800,000 people around the country have enrolled in the National Institutes of Health program since its inception. With an initial $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health this summer, Anton-Culver will lead the Southern California consortium to further boost enrollment in the program.

By building a database that reflects the full diversity of the U.S. population, researchers hope to make breakthroughs that result in more equitable outcomes among patients. A challenge, however, is overcoming concerns about the disparagement of underserved communities that have historically been excluded in health research, Anton-Culver tells the Orange County Register.

"This is a very important issue. The program has a board, which I am a part of, and the board reviews studies for a potential of stigmatization of a particular group of people based on characteristics such as sexual identity, race or ethnicity. All of these characteristics are not the cause of a disease.

"That's what you want to find out: What are the environmental factors causing disease so you can do some prevention? It's not the group that is causing the disease, it's the environmental factor that is causing that disease."

Anton-Culver is a distinguished professor of medicine at the UC Irvine School of Medicine and the director of the Genetic Epidemiology Research Institute. Her research is centered on cancer epidemiology and cancer genetics. Her use of population genetics to study cancer has greatly contributed to the understanding of a number of cancer types, including breast, colorectal, ovarian and prostate.

Eligible U.S. adults can join All of Us. Enrollment locations at UCI Health, MemorialCare and Loma Linda University Health make participation in the research program easy and accessible for Southern Californians. Learn more ›

Read more

• Orange County Register: UCI plays big role in national initiative to make health research more inclusive ›
• UC Irvine awarded $47 million for All of Us Research Program ›