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Director’s Innovation Speaker Series: All of Us Research Program: Improving Health Through Innovative Technology, Large and Diverse Cohorts, and Precision Medicine

Date

October 27, 2022

Location

Virtual

Overview

Joshua Denny, M.D., M.S., F.A.C.M.I., Chief Executive Officer of the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, discussed the program’s historic effort to collect and study data from one million or more people living in the United States. Dr. Denny addressed topics such as five-year goals for the program, the upcoming Mental Health and Wellbeing survey to be launched in collaboration with NIMH, and the Exploring the Mind ancillary study.

Recording

Read the transcript.

About Dr. Denny

Dr. Denny is the Chief Executive Officer of the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program. From its inception, he has been involved in All of Us as a member of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director‘s Precision Medicine Initiative Working Group, which developed the program’s initial scientific blueprint. He led the program’s initial prototyping project and served as the principal investigator for the All of Us Data and Research Center.

As a physician-scientist, Dr. Denny is deeply committed to improving patient care through the advancement of precision medicine. Before joining the NIH, Dr. Denny was a Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine, Director of the Center for Precision Medicine, and Vice President for Personalized Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). In his roles at VUMC, he was both a practicing internist and a researcher. His research interests include the use of electronic health records (EHRs) and genomics to understand the disease and drug response better. He also led efforts implementing precision medicine to improve patient outcomes.

Dr. Denny was a leader in the development of phenome‐wide association studies and phenotype risk scores. He served as PI for Vanderbilt sites in the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network, Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN), and the Implementing Genomics into Practice (IGNITE) Network. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the American College of Medical Informatics.

About the Director’s Innovation Speaker Series

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) established the Director’s Innovation Speaker Series to encourage broad, interdisciplinary thinking in developing scientific initiatives and programs and to press for theoretical leaps in science over the continuation of incremental thought. Innovation speakers are encouraged to describe their work from the perspective of breaking through existing boundaries and developing successful new ideas, as well as working outside their primary area of expertise in ways that have pushed their fields forward. We encourage discussions of the meaning of innovation, creativity, breakthroughs, and paradigm-shifting.

Sponsored by

Division of Extramural Activities