The plan to enroll 1 million volunteers in the NIH's All of Us research study is going well, the agency says. According to a new report in ScienceInsider, the NIH has recruited 143,000 participants who have already taken surveys and visited a clinic to give blood and urine samples. Another 87,000 people have registered for the study.
Study leaders believe that All of Us will reach its goal of 1 million participants within five or six years, although they will need to ramp up enrollment, ScienceInsider says. The agency is planning to broaden the study's geographic distribution beyond the few states it covers right now.
The good news is that the 143,000 people who so far have given consent, taken surveys, and visited a clinic to give samples and measurements meet the study's goals for diversity: 53 percent are ethnic or racial minorities, which is more than the 39 percent these groups represent in the US population, according to ScienceInsider. For example, participants with self-identified African ancestry constitute 20 percent of the study, compared with 13 percent of the population.