The National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program will be in El Paso this week. Brave De La Cruz is a Tour Manager for the program. She said that the traveling health program has a goal of enrolling at least 1 million volunteers in order to gather health data for a variety of research purposes.
“What we’re doing is we’re going to different underrepresented communities to be able to gather this information that is going to help researchers,” she said.
Since opening enrollment in 2018, the program has over 500,000 volunteers so far, according to the National Institute of Health.
De La Cruz said the purpose of building such a large database is to create a hub for researchers to access, rather than having to spend resources creating a new database for every individual study. Therefore, it’s important to get health data from a broad audience.
“Diversity is extremely important because we’re not all created equal, and healthcare is not a one size fits all solution. So what may work to treat you may not work to treat me. So researchers are trying to identify better ways to keep us all healthier for a longer time.”
Interested participants can find the All of Us Research Program on the campus of the University of Texas El Paso operating from 10 am to 4 pm through Feb. 17.
