ACR Urges Congressional Funding for NIH All of Us Program

ACR® joined a community letter urging Congress to provide dedicated funding in support of NIH’s All of Us research program in federal fiscal year (FY) 2027. The College and other signers urge lawmakers to set a line-item budget close to $541 million, the program’s FY 2023 funding level. The letter highlights to lawmakers the program’s leadership in precision medicine technologies and how it is a valuable tool for researchers as one of the world’s largest datasets.

At a recent medical imaging conference, Geoff Ginsburg, Chief Medical and Scientific Officer and Acting Chief Data Officer for All of Us, requested help to develop a strategy to add medical imaging into the All of Us data set. The program includes clinical data from more than 600,000 participants, but does not include imaging.

Creating and maintaining centralized repositories of images is complex both in terms of access to those imaging studies and the financial resources needed to collect and maintain a repository of millions of imaging studies representing diverse modalities and diseases. ACR has extensive experience and is prepared to help with creating and maintaining centralized repositories of images. Through its Center for Research and Innovation (CRI), the College has more than a decade of experience supporting thousands of clinical trials and imaging studies

ACR offered to help develop alternative ways to enable access to critical imaging data linked to the All of Us program’s clinical data, thereby allowing the findings attributable to medical imaging to be included in its datasets. ACR will continue to advocate for additional funding for the All of Us program, specifically to add medical imaging, making the database more useful for researchers and improving patient care.

For more information, contact Katie Grady, ACR Government Affairs Director.