The All of Us Research Program: A Treasure Trove of Biomedical Research Data

Have a health-related research question? The world’s largest integrated genomics and health database has answers.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced on June 30, 2026, that its All of Us Research Program has issued the most expansive data release in its history. With research data from more than 747,000 participants nationwide available to scientists, it is now the world's largest integrated genomics and health database.

In support of this NIH effort to power next-generation discoveries in precision medicine, UC Irvine continues to enroll and retain program participants as well as use All of Us data for innovative research.

“UC Irvine has been one of the sites for the All of Us Research Program since it started in 2017,” says Hoda Anton-Culver, PhD, a Donald Bren Professor and Distinguished Professor of Medicine at UC Irvine.

As principal investigator of the All of Us Southern California Consortium, Anton-Culver and her team have enrolled more than 35,000 program participants at UC Irvine, including over 1,300 people for the ancillary Eyes on Health Partnered Research Study that collects multiple types of ocular images.

Additionally, over 180 UC Irvine faculty, students, statisticians and investigators are registered researchers of the All of Us database.

“So we have expertise in both contributing to and capitalizing on this rich and freely available dataset,” says Anton-Culver, “and we’re here to help others leverage it in advancing their own research.”

Building the Largest Biomedical Database

“All of Us is the most comprehensive program in the world when it comes to gathering health information,” says Anton-Culver. “It opens science and medicine to the idea of looking at well-being at the individual level, which has not been a reality in the past.”

With this recent expansive data release, the All of Us dataset now includes more than 1.3 billion genetic variants, 553,000 genotyping arrays and 481,000 electronic health records, as well as over 747,000 survey responses capturing social circumstances, behaviors and environments.

Notably, more than 645,000 All of Us participants come from communities historically underrepresented in biomedical research, including older adults, women, people with disabilities, people of all races and ethnicities, and residents of rural and non-metropolitan areas. Participants span all 50 states and U.S. territories.

“In addition to full genomic information for every participant,” says Anton-Culver, “we’re including occupation and where they live, which helps determine socioeconomic status and lots of other environmental information that can be used to answer novel research questions.”

So whether you’re a geneticist, environmental scientist, social worker, clinician — or anyone else pondering questions about health and society — Anton-Culver invites you to access the database.

The All of Us database operates on a tiered-data access model with an inclusive framework. The public tier is available for everybody to interrogate and contains only aggregate data with identifiers removed. The registered and controlled tier contains individual-level data and whole genome sequencing data, available only to registered researchers with approved access.

“The data is an invaluable resource,” says Anton-Culver. “It gives people the opportunity to ask any question they feel is important.”

Advancing Precision Medicine

One question Anton-Culver has asked relates to advancing women’s health: “How can we close the research gap when it comes to sex-specific health issues?”

In collaboration with researchers from UC Irvine, City University of New York, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MGH Center for Precision Psychiatry, and other institutions, Anton-Culver has explored how the All of Us data can help address conditions that uniquely and disproportionately affect women.

They recently published their findings in a paper in the Journal of Women’s Health, titled “Leveraging the All of Us Research Program to Advance Women's Health: Addressing Conditions that Affect Women Differently, Disproportionately, and Uniquely.”

“Our findings show that the All of Us dataset fills long-standing gaps by supporting stratified analyses enabling research into women’s health across the lifespan,” she says.

The team found that hyperthyroidism is strongly associated with the development of osteoporosis, pointing to opportunities for additional screening and treatment. Their analysis of more than 10,000 pregnancies also revealed that anemia, preeclampsia, obesity, placental abruption and placenta previa are significant risk factors for postpartum hemorrhage.

These findings exemplify how the All of Us database can answer research questions and identify opportunities to improve healthcare.

Anton-Culver encourages others to explore novel uses of the database and join the more than 23,800 researchers already working with All of Us data.

“The All of Us database can be accessed by anybody in the world, once they go through the onboarding procedures,” says Anton-Culver, adding that it could be of particular value to medical students for their required graduation projects.

“It’s really a treasure, and we invite people to contact us,” she says. “I’m happy to discuss any research questions and how the All of Us Research Program and our team here can support UC Irvine researchers in interrogating the data.”

For more information about the All of Us Research Program and how to access the data, contact jennyf3@hs.uci.edu.

— Shani Murray