The NNLM All of Us Program coordinates engagement and training activities offered by NNLM in support of the NIH All of Us Research Program (All of Us), a large, multi-faceted research initiative seeking to collect biomedical data from one million people across the United States, to support precision medicine by making the data available for biomedical research.
This partnership between the National Library of Medicine and All of Us began in September 2017 with a 3-year pilot program to establish a Community Engagement Network and a training platform for All of Us, supported by existing NNLM awardees. The pilot years included funding to NNLM Regional Medical Libraries to support regional engagement with All of Us and contribute to nationally coordinated programs and services. Two national centers evolved from this pilot that continued to serve the needs of the initiative through 2022: the Training and Education Center, and the Community Engagement Center. Based on the results and impact of NNLM pilot activities, a new National All of Us Program Center (NAPC) was devised for the 2022-2026 cooperative agreement cycle to centralize continued community engagement and training support for this initiative. The NAPC was awarded to the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Iowa in a team-science, co-PI agreement to begin May 1, 2022.
The NAPC has developed and distributed a robust portfolio of community-based programs and services, focusing on health literacy, digital literacy, research literacy, citizen science, precision medicine, and supporting participation in research. These programs and services aim to build the knowledge, resources and skills necessary for individuals to make informed decisions about their health, understand how they can contribute to research, and understand how to engage with health information and research in a digital environment. Through this work, the NAPC strives to support the mission of NNLM to improve public health across the spectrum, ensure that people understand how medicine, research, and healthcare are evolving to be tailored to individuals, and understand the importance of participation in research programs like All of Us, especially for communities that are underrepresented in biomedical research.
The NAPC has also created and housed educational content for NNLM and All of Us, and built and maintained the All of Us Training and Education Platform to centralize access to learning content for All of Us audiences, serving an important role in the program’s infrastructure by ensuring access to compliance-related and role-based trainings, and regularly evaluating the learning needs of program partners to support them in their work. This training supports healthcare providers, community engagement partners, and staff of the All of Us Consortium to engage, recruit, retain, and return value to program participants, and it supports researchers to access and use All of Us data in the production and dissemination of research results.
As the All of Us Research Program is approaching the end of their initial program period in 2026, NNLM will sunset support for this initiative in two phases. The Community Engagement function of the NAPC will end on April 30, 2025, after many successful years of building relationships and partnerships with public libraries to conduct community-based events and programs that raised awareness of and engagement with All of Us. The Training and Education function of the NAPC will end on April 30, 2026, after transitioning the All of Us Training and Education Platform to long-term retention partners to ensure continuity of services for future program maintenance.