LAUSR

Nearly 3 years after then-President Barack Obama laid out a vision for perhaps the most ambitious and costly national health study ever, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is still grappling with the complexities of the effort. The All of Us study aims to probe links between genes, lifestyle, and health by enrolling 1 million people for a long-term precision medicine study. NIH had once expected that by early 2017 it would enroll at least 10,000 participants for a pilot testing phase; it is up to just 2000. Its national kickoff, once envisioned for 2016 and then mid-2017, has been delayed as staff work out the complex logistics of the study, which is projected to cost $4.3 billion over 10 years. But study leaders say that for an endeavor this complex, delays are inevitable.