What is the All of Us Research Program?
The All of Us Research Program is a large research program. The goal is to help researchers understand more about why people get sick or stay healthy.
We hope that at least one million people will join the All of Us Research Program. People who join will give us information about their health, habits, what it’s like where they live, and if they will want information about their DNA. By looking for patterns in this information, researchers may learn more about what affects people’s health.
The All of Us Research Program will last for 10 years or more. This will allow researchers to study health over time.
If you decide to join the All of Us Research Program, you will be contributing to an effort to improve the health of generations to come. You also may learn about your own health.
How will you protect my privacy?
We take your privacy very seriously. We use the latest technology to help keep your data private and safe. When you provide personal information, your name and other direct identifiers will be removed and replaced with a unique code.
Our rigorous security models help ensure data is protected and used ethically and responsibly.
All of Us has a variety of safeguards in place to protect your information and your identity. Here are a few of those safeguards:
- 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. Researchers who want to study your DNA must promise not to try to identify you.
- We store information on protected 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. If there is a data breach at All of Us, even without your name, there is a chance someone could figure out who you are. We believe the chance of this is very small, but it is not zero.
