Health providers play important role in All of Us enrollment
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* Kim Krisberg

When it comes to large-scale, longitudinal health studies such as the All of Us Research Program, blood bank donors are the ideal participants, according to David Wellis.

“Our donors are already engaged and they want to help the community,” said Wellis, PhD, CEO of the San Diego Blood Bank. “But the biggest thing we can contribute is diversity. Blood donor populations — not only in San Diego, but across the country — pretty much mirror the diversity of their communities.”

Over the past year, in fact, Wellis reports that the San Diego Blood Bank has enrolled several thousand people in All of Us, a program launched last year to gather health data from at least 1 million people as part of the national Precision Medicine Initiative. The blood bank, a member of the California Precision Medicine Consortium, is among dozens of health care provider organizations nationwide working to enroll All of Us study participants.

In San Diego, the bank has dedicated space for people to enroll and have their biological specimens taken. Their mobile banks are equipped for enrollment, as well, which lets staff engage with residents across the city and even in its more rural outskirts. The partnership is such a good fit, Wellis is now helping blood banks in Houston and Seattle go online as All of Us enrollers. He said the next big challenge will be sustaining enrollee engagement over the long term.

![Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/https://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/49/5/S4/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/49/5/S4/F1)

All of Us posters, like this one written in Spanish, are a way partners are generating interest in the health research program.

Image courtesy NIH/All of Us

“A study like this is really about engaging populations as partners in research,” Wellis told *The Nation’s Health*. “It’s really an amazing project — we’re going to learn so much along the way.”

Across the country in Florida and Georgia, a consortium of four health care provider organizations — known as the SouthEast Enrollment Center — had enrolled as of May more than 8,800 All of Us participants, all of whom completed a health visit, survey and provided specimens.

Olveen Carrasquillo, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine and public health sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, which leads the southeast consortium, noted that of those enrolled, almost 80% are black and Hispanic and nearly 30% have low incomes. The group’s five-year goal is to enroll 90,000 people.

Initial outreach efforts began inside the University of Miami Health System, Carrasquillo said, where researchers worked closely with clinicians to identify and engage with potential enrollees, noting that the consent process for the study is extremely detailed. More recently, All of Us researchers began accompanying clinicians who volunteer in the community. In the future, the researchers hope to partner with local organizations.

“This data is such a gift — it’ll have so many downstream benefits,” Carrasquillo told *The Nation’s Health*.

For more on All of Us health care provider organizations, visit [www.allofus.nih.gov](http://www.allofus.nih.gov).

*   Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association