Dr. Josh Denny. Photo Courtesy of Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
A Statement from the NIH Director:
I am delighted to announce the selection of Joshua Denny, M.D., M.S., as Chief Executive Officer of the All of Us Research Program. As CEO, Josh will oversee NIH’s efforts to build one of the largest and most comprehensive precision medicine research platforms in the world, in partnership with a diverse network of awardees and participants.
Josh will come to NIH from Nashville, Tennessee, where he is a Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He has been involved in All of Us from its inception, first as a member of the Advisory Committee to the (NIH) Director Precision Medicine Initiative Working Group, which developed the program’s scientific blueprint. He led the program’s initial prototyping project and is currently the principal investigator for the All of Us Data and Research Center.
As a physician scientist, Josh is deeply committed to improving patient care through the advancement of precision medicine. He will bring expertise in bioinformatics, genomics, and internal medicine, and significant prior experience with other large research efforts, including the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network, the Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN), and the Implementing Genomics in Practice (IGNITE) Network. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American College of Medical Informatics, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.
In this position, Josh will work in close collaboration with All of Us Deputy Director Stephanie Devaney, Ph.D., who is being promoted to Chief Operating Officer—a new position in which she will assume additional responsibilities in leading the operations of the program and its extensive consortium of awardees and other partners. Stephanie also will continue to oversee the program’s policy work, serve as principal liaison to the Institutional Review Board and Trans-NIH Liaisons Coordinating Team, and provide expert counsel on key initiatives.
Eric Dishman, who currently leads All of Us, will become Chief Innovation Officer, leveraging his prior experience in Silicon Valley to guide strategic planning efforts and build a culture of innovation. This work will include creating a pipeline to support rapid delivery of exploratory projects for future development. Eric has brought tremendous vision and dedication to the program as its inaugural leader, and I’m grateful that he will continue to share his talents with us in this new role.
With more than 300,000 people already enrolled in the program, these changes represent the progression of the program to a fully empowered national flagship for biomedical research. Recruitment will continue to reach the goal of at least one million participants; additional genotype, electronic health record, wearable sensor, and environmental exposure data will be added to the unprecedented longitudinal dataset; and broad access to researchers will soon commence—guided by the most secure data system possible in order to protect participant confidentiality. Josh, Stephanie, and Eric have worked together on All of Us from the beginning and share a common devotion to its goals and core values. I could not be more pleased to have them at the helm as we look forward to a new stage of scientific discovery.
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, National Institutes of Health
