By Bob Shepard
UAB News
In-person enrollment activities for the All of Us Research Program have resumed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham after being paused since March 17, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
All of Us stations in the Kirklin Clinic of UAB Hospital and UAB Medical Towers reopened in the end of January. The station at UAB Highlands Hospital reopened Feb. 1. All locations are holding visits by appointment to allow individuals a safe environment to join and engage with the program through providing biosamples, sharing electronic health records, completing surveys and more. All sites are keeping participant and staff safety at the forefront of procedures by monitoring local conditions as well as practicing masking, social distancing, limiting capacity, frequently cleaning and sanitizing daily.
All of Us is a nationwide research program administered by the National Institutes of Health to advance individualized prevention, treatment and care for people of all backgrounds. Following the more than 10-month pause of in-person activities, staff are excited to once more be able to meet people in person.
“Our team members are thrilled to resume in-person enrollment, talking about All of Us and welcoming new participants to this important national research program,” said Cora E. Lewis, M.D., chair of the Department of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and co-principal investigator for the All of Us Southern Network, headquartered at UAB.
In addition to the Birmingham locations, other Southern Network sites that have reopened are Louisiana State University, Tulane University, and UAB’s Huntsville Regional Medical campus and Selma Family Medicine. Pop-up sites have relaunched in Montgomery.
Since the program’s beginning in May 2018, UAB has enrolled more than 12,000 participants. Overall, the Southern Network has enrolled more than 23,000 participants from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
The All of Us Research Program aims to enable discoveries that will improve overall health by encouraging the public to take an active role in steering the future of health research. The national All of Us recruitment goal is 1 million people.
The UAB program is led by Lewis; Bruce Korf, M.D., Ph.D., UAB chief genomics officer; and Mona Fouad, M.D., professor and director of UAB’s Minority Health & Health Disparities Research Center. Other UAB leaders involved in the effort include James J. Cimino, M.D., professor and director of UAB’s Informatics Institute; and Monica Baskin, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of Preventive Medicine for Culture and Diversity.
Alabamians age 19 or older, regardless of health status, are eligible to enroll in the program by visiting JoinAllofUs.org/UAB, calling (833) JOIN-UAB or emailing allofus@uabmc.edu.
The All of Us Southern Network includes the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Cooper Green Mercy Health Services, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Tulane University, Tuskegee University, UAB School of Medicine’s Montgomery Internal Medicine and Selma Family Medicine programs, UAB School of Medicine’s Huntsville Regional Medical Campus, University of Mississippi Medical Center, University of South Alabama Health System, and University Medical Center in Tuscaloosa.
This work is supported by the All of Us Research Program of the National Institutes of Health under award number OT2OD025284.
“All of Us” is a registered service mark of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
