People who live in cities typically have different health outcomes than people who live in rural areas. The facilitators of the All of Us Research Program are trying to find out why.

All of Us Pennsylvania will bring its research clinics to a few sites in Butler County through March where individuals can anonymously contribute information about their lifestyle and environment to help researchers develop “precision medicine.”

“Rural individuals are not typically represented in research, and people who don’t live in the city have different environments and lifestyles,” said Lori Vish Stearns, director of engagement for the All of Us Pennsylvania Research Program. “People from rural areas can lend their voice and their data to this research program, and we hope in turn it will be a much more diverse data set.”

The All of Us Research Program is funded by the National Institutes of Health, and launched in Pennsylvania in 2017 as All of Us PA. Volunteers in the program start by filling out surveys that supply information about their living situation and some of their health history.

All of Us PA research clinics will be set up at the South Butler Community Library, 240 W. Main St., Saxonburg; Butler SUCCEED, 150 N. Main St.; and the Jean B. Purvis Community Health Center, 103 Bonnie Drive, at the end of February and in March.

Stearns said a person who signs up for the research program will take about an hour-and-a-half filling out surveys, and about a half-hour going through the actual clinic process.

“What will happen is we do a height and weight and waist and hip measurement; three blood pressures with resting time in-between,” Stearns said. “We do a blood sample that's about three to four tablespoons. Then we do a urine sample.”

The health information gathered by All of Us is “de-identified,” and it's just the data that gets shared, not the personal information. Data is sent to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where researchers are working to pinpoint reasons for health outcomes using thousands of surveys from across the country.

According to Stearns, the more people who volunteer for the clinic, the more data researchers will have to work with when trying to improve health care treatments.

“We already have about half-a-million individuals around the country … that's a huge bio bank,” Stearns said. “Overall it’s to get a better picture of why people get sick or get healthy differently than one another.”

People who complete the All of Us PA process will receive a $25 gift card, because the researchers “couldn't do it without volunteers.”

Those interested in being a volunteer for All of Us PA can sign up for a clinic at joinallofuspa.org/home/locations.

Stearns said precision health care could be the future of medicine, but it will take data from various people from across the country and the world to make it a reality.

“Precision medicine means getting to the right answer faster, rather than by using trial and error, which is typically how medicine is practiced,” Stearns said.