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USC Takes Part In Massive $1.5B DNA Study Seeking 1M Participants

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – Enrollment for a massive $1.5 billion nationwide federal health study begins next week in the hopes of establishing the world's largest DNA and health database for medical research.

The National Institutes of Health's "All of Us" program is hoping to enroll at least one million volunteers from a "wide variety of backgrounds" who will provide their electronic health records, family medical histories, blood and urine samples and take part in surveys.

"By partnering with 1 million diverse people who share information about themselves over many years, the All of Us Research Program will enable research to more precisely prevent and treat a variety of health conditions," NIH said in a statement Monday.

The USC Keck School of Medicine is one of several organizations taking part in helping recruit volunteers for the program.

"It's like the human genome project but for the entire American population," said Dr. Daniella Meeker, a researcher at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, in a news release Tuesday.

Funding for the 10-year program was approved by Congress in 2016.

According to the NIH, how much information participants choose to provide is up to them, and not every participant will be asked for physical measurements and samples. All personal information, such as names and addresses, will be removed from the data. Names will also be removed from the samples, which will be "stored in a secure biobank," NIH said.

"Ultimately, the All of Us Research Program will be a rich and open data resource for traditional academic researchers as well as citizen scientists—and everyone in between," the NIH said.

The new study gets underway, meanwhile, amid health database privacy concerns after it emerged last week that homicide investigators in Northern California had used DNA information from a private genealogy website to help identify the suspect in the Golden State Killer case.

About 27,000 people have already enrolled in the program as part of a beta test. Open national enrollment begins Sunday, May 6.

For more information, or to enroll, click here.

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