Dr. Monica Kraft Appointed to Lead All of Us Program

I am pleased to announce that Monica Kraft, MD, has been named contact principal investigator for the University of Arizona – Banner Health All of Us Research Program. Since 2017, UArizona and Banner have partnered in this national research effort that will inform thousands of research studies covering a wide variety of health conditions.

Led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the All of Us Research Program is a historic effort to collect and study data from at least 1 million people in the United States. By building one of the world’s largest and most diverse databases for biomedical research, scientists will be better able to make significant strides toward fulfilling the promise of precision treatments for individual patients and diverse populations.

In her new role, Dr. Kraft will lead the UArizona – Banner program’s efforts to ensure diverse populations are well-represented in the national All of Us database. To date, the program has enrolled nearly 40,000 core participants from across Arizona and Colorado, with more than 82% from communities that are historically underrepresented in biomedical research.

Dr. Kraft joined the College of Medicine – Tucson in 2014 and serves as professor and chair of the Department of Medicine. She also holds the Robert and Irene Flinn Endowed Chair of Medicine, and is deputy director of the Health Sciences Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center. A renowned physician-scientist, Dr. Kraft is an expert in pulmonary medicine and specializes in translational asthma research with a focus on precision medicine therapies to treat severe asthma. Her research has been consistently funded by the NIH and the American Lung Association for 25 years, and she serves on the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Advisory Council. In 2019, she was named the Arizona Bioscience Researcher of the Year for her commitment to pushing the frontiers of science for the betterment of people in Arizona and around the world.

Along with Dr. Kraft’s appointment, I am pleased to announce that Michael M.I. Abecassis, MD, MBA, dean of the College of Medicine – Tucson and professor in the Department of Surgery and in the Department of Immunobiology, has been named a co-investigator for the All of Us program. Dr. Abecassis is a nationally recognized leader in medicine who has been successfully guiding the College of Medicine – Tucson into a new era of medical training, scientific discovery and care delivery. He has received continuous funding from the NIH for the past 24 years, serving as principal investigator of several research grants, including translational and clinical studies investigations into biomarkers for both kidney and liver transplant recipients.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Kraft and Dr. Abecassis on their respective appointments. I am confident that Dr. Kraft’s leadership of the All of Us program and Dr. Abecassis’ contributions will fuel important biomedical research for decades to come, helping to achieve precision health care for all populations.

Michael D. Dake, MD
Senior Vice President for University of Arizona Health Sciences