RALEIGH, N.C. — A nationwide medical research tour bus is in Greensboro after parking four days in Raleigh last week.
What You Need To Know
The All of Us Journey tours three cities in North Carolina
It is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health
The goal is gathering more specific information from a wider pool of people to turn scientific data into better medicine
It’s called the All of Us Journey, and the goal of the research wheels is creating a diverse biomedical database for better medical research.
People working the tour believe better information leads to better medicine.
After a two-year break in the pandemic, the mobile health exhibit is on the road again.
Josh Perez said he is happy to be helping with it.
“The main objective is to let people know they are participating in a program that will benefit everybody,” Perez said.
Perez, who is in his 30s, is the co-head tour manager for the All of Us Journey. The bus is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, and it began touring the country in 2018.
Perez has wheeled from city to city for the first time since the bus tour resumed. He said he wants to get as many people registered as possible.
“We’re able to get people to understand what our goal is and where we are headed,” Perez said.
Their goal is gathering as much information as possible by engaging, educating and enrolling people from historically underrepresented communities, including his grandparents, who came to America from Mexico in the 1940s. He referenced a statistic from the U.S. census.
To join their database a person must first create an account followed by other steps. The program works by getting participants to share their data, which is protected to be later studied by researchers. After a number of years, participants can learn more about their own specific health, and researchers can submit these findings for publication.
The exhibit has a physical wall of facts on spinning blocks to inform interested visitors about who is and isn’t participating in research across the country.
“The Hispanic/Latino community represents 18% of the population but only 5% are participating in clinical trials,” Perez said.
From his own life he said religion, being uninformed and fear can drive away some populations. As a second-generation Mexican-American he said the topic of who the research reflects matters to him greatly.
“It’s a cultural thing. There’s a lot of factors to take into account for that,” Perez said.
The focus of this research is about building a biobank for precision medicine. In a nutshell, every time their bus rolled from one city to the next it’s a chance to take those sign-ups and one day turn them into tailor-made health care plans for underrepresented populations based on their lifestyle, biology and environment — not a one-size-fits-all approach.
“We’re all about precision medicine. Some people might wear glasses, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they wear the same prescription. When you take that into account that’s what we consider precision medicine,” Perez said.
It’s why many times All of Us Journey partners with local organizations at health fairs to spread the word.
“I think when people get the idea that they are contributing to something that’s not just going to benefit themselves but their family members in the future it gives them a sense of accomplishment,” Perez said.
Most scientific data comes from white men, which isn’t based on the spectrum of race, ethnicity or gender of the health patients doctors are treating.
This is why being able to speak Spanish is a benefit to him. At one point on Friday before the tour bus left Raleigh, Perez spoke in Spanish for one woman who was curious about the question-and-answer process. He said this part is integral to getting more people in the database.
“The more DNA we can have available to us, the more accurate our information can be,” he said.
After answering every question on a screen, participants can then provide a DNA sample in the form of a blood draw or saliva swab.
The DNA is taken from the on-site location and sent straight to the Mayo Clinic.
If participants give a blood sample, they can learn about how their specific DNA results could affect their health over time.
The tour will be in Greensboro through Friday and then in Winston-Salem April 4-8.
