For nearly the first decade of the National Institutes of Health’s “All of Us” Research Program — aimed at increasing diversity in genetic research — a major component was missing: kids.

“Children are approximately 24% of our population in the U.S. and 100% of our future,” Dr. Sara Van Driest, director of pediatrics for NIH’s All of Us Program, told hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter. “In order to provide them with the very best care for the future and have them benefit from this resource, we need to include them.”

The journey is personal for Katrina Yamazaki, Ph.D., principal investigator for Community Health Center, Inc., in Connecticut, a partner organization in All of Us. Yamazaki and her husband adopted three boys through the foster care system.

“We don’t know a whole lot about their … biological families’ medical history,” Yamazaki said. “The idea that this program will one day be able to provide some of [that] missing information to me and my husband, in order to become health advocates for our children is really important to me.”

The NIH in August began limited enrollment in the program for children age 4 and under.

“We started with that youngest age group so we can follow them the longest,” Van Driest said.

Community Health Center, Inc., for its part, is partnering with community-based organizations such as the Hartford Public Library to build trust, raise awareness of the project and make a fun atmosphere through activities.

All of Us intends to change what might be seen as a “one-size-fits-all” approach to health care. It aims to encompass 1 million individuals of diverse backgrounds but doesn’t focus on particular diseases or conditions, Van Driest said. The diversity, too, goes beyond culture, touching geography, age and socioeconomic status.

“One of the goals of research is to connect the dots,” she said. Given the scope of the project, “there will be so many dots that we’ll be able to connect,” Van Driest said.

 “If we fail to include a group of individuals or an aspect of diversity, we miss out on that uniqueness. That limits us in what we’re able to understand about humanity in general,” she said. “It also limits research and learning about that group of individuals. And it limits downstream how clinicians can care about individuals and give them the very best possible outcomes.”

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Farzad Mostashari, Founder and CEO of Aledade, former National Coordinator for Health IT, and Chair of the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge, a partnership with Facebook Data for Good, Carnegie Melon, Duke, University of Maryland, Resolve to Save Lives and organized by Catalyst @Health 2.0. The challenge is encouraging developers to create tools to mine data submitted by tens of millions of Facebook users, tracking real time COVID-19 symptoms to identify potential pandemic hotspots, for better epidemiological forecasting.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome Seema Verma, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Trump administration, a trillion dollar-a-year agency providing health coverage for 130 million vulnerable Americans on Medicaid and Seniors on Medicare. She discusses the agency’s dramatic transformation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including hundreds of waivers lifting restrictions for providers across the country, a swift expansion of telehealth adoption, and Operation Warp Speed’s quest to provide a safe and efficacious vaccine for widespread distribution, once it is approved. She also addresses recent allegations around agency spending questions.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with US Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, whose critically acclaimed new book examines America’s long, unique history of violence and its embedded gun culture. His book, “The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy”, examines the birth and growth of America’s gun culture, the conditions that perpetuated it, and his quest to pass sane gun laws in response to the Sandy Hook School shooting.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Sara Goza, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the largest organization dedicated to advancing the physical, mental and social health of the nation’s infants, children and young adults. Dr. Goza discusses how pediatricians can help inform the tough decisions families are making to keep kids safe while sending them back to school, the vital importance of continued well-visits and vaccinations for kids, and the policy agenda being promoted by the Academy to insure the health and safety of all children, including gun violence, poverty and social determinants of health.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. William Haseltine, President of ACCESS Health International, a global health think tank. He is also a renowned scientist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and founder of Harvard Medical School’s HIV/AIDS and cancer research centers. He discusses his two new books: A Family Guide to COVID: Questions and Answers for Parents, Grandparents and Children, and A COVID Back To School Guide which are continually-updating ‘living e-books’ offering answers to the many questions families have about how to navigate their way through the pandemic.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with New York Times Science and Global Health Reporter Apoorva Mandavilli, who has been covering emerging discoveries around the COVID-19 pandemic. She discusses the rapidly-evolving science on how this novel pathogen spreads, the guidelines for sending kids and teachers back into schools, and the rapid development of therapeutics and vaccines to treat and prevent infection.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Naor Bar-Zeev, Deputy Director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He examines the scientific guidelines governing COVID-19 vaccine phase 3 clinical trials, including a broad demographic representation to ensure vaccine safety across multiple populations, and the need to address vaccine hesitancy as well as the global supply chain needed to distribute billions of doses.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Eric Topol, Founder and Director of the Scripps Translational Institute, and author of “The Creative Destruction of Medicine”. Dr. Topol is a renowned cardiologist and health data champion, and shares a harsh assessment of federal handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the US. He’s heartened by the many collaborations yielding significant scientific discovery around rapid testing technology and vaccines. He’s concerned the anti-science movement will undermine deployment of an effective vaccination program, once one makes it to the public.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Donald Warne, Director of Indians Into Medicine (INMED) at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine. A renowned expert on American Indian health policies, Dr. Warne talks about the devastating toll COVID-19 is exacting on communities of color, particularly American Indians, who already suffer the effects of long term poverty, health disparities and Congress’ repeated failure to fully fund Indian Health Services which has led to a huge burden of chronic disease.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with House Majority Whip, US Congressman James Clyburn who says we have reached an inflection point in American history in addressing the high cost to communities of color from health disparities, policing injustices and economic inequality. Congressman Clyburn examines important legislation aimed at stemming racially motivated police brutality, as well as improving health care access for vulnerable Americans through expansion of community health centers and telehealth.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Michael Osterholm, world-renowned epidemiologist, pandemic expert and Director of the Center for Infectious Disease, Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. The author of The Deadliest Enemy: Our War with Killer Germs, Dr Osterholm has warned for years of the likelihood of a pandemic such as COVID-19.He extols the need for ongoing measures to protect the public health and front line health care workers through mask use, social distancing and tests, and the herculean scientific efforts to produce treatments and a vaccine.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Ashish Jha, Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, who is advising state, federal and international governments on Covid-19. He laments the delayed and inadequate response by the federal government to the threat of Covid-19, how failure to deploy a cohesive testing strategy has cost lives, and how an aggressive national approach is needed to safely navigate the way through this pandemic. He predicts the coronavirus will change training of future health professionals, as well as the way the American health care system is run.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. John Halamka, President of the Mayo Clinic Platform, a partnership with Google and multiple entities to improve healthcare through better data. He recently launched the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition, with more than 800 private sector and academic partners collaborating on multiple fronts to combat COVID-19. They discuss the “five phases” to a “new normal” including isolation, infection and antibody testing, contact tracing and vaccine development as precursors fully reopening society.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome US Surgeon General under President Obama, Dr. Vivek Murthy, whose new book “Together: The Healing Power of Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World” examines the causes and harmful effects of the epidemic of loneliness in America and its impact on health. Dr. Murthy examines how the COVID-19 pandemic is amplifying this crisis, and how we, as a society, must address this issue.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Sheri Fink, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times Correspondent and one of the Executive Producers of “Pandemic: How to Avoid an Outbreak” on Netflix. She has covered numerous catastrophes, epidemcis and war zones, and shares her insights into public health interventions that reduce harm from pandemics, and how institutions and individuals must prepare to protect themselves.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Saad Omer, Director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, on the expanding COVID-19 outbreak. A renowned epidemiologist, Dr. Omer discusses the best protocols against spread of the Coronavirus epidemic, the need for evidence-based science to guide government responses, and how the global research community is working together to tackle this outbreak and create a vaccine in record time.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Anthony Fauci, globally renowned epidemiologist and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Fauci shares the latest findings on COVID-19, a new Coronavirus strain that has spread to nearly 30 countries and left thousands dead. He discusses how travel restrictions and local quarantines in China may have averted a bigger global health catastrophe and looks at the rapid development of vaccines already in the pipeline.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome Pulitzer Prize winners, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and journalist and consultant Sheryl WuDunn. The prolific husband-and-wife writing team discuss their latest book about a humanitarian crisis happening right here in America. In “Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope”, they explore the decline in life expectancy and the rise of ‘deaths of despair’ in the US. They also examine solutions to address this growing public health crisis.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Rebecca Cunningham, Director of the University of Michigan Injury Prevention Center. Dr. Cunningham is leading a national team of scientists in ground-breaking collaborative research to examine the myriad causes of the gun violence epidemic in this country, now the leading cause of death for America’s teens, and second leading cause of death for American children overall. Congress has recently allocated money for gun violence research after a two-decade drought. Her team is examining social causes, policy requirements and prevention interventions to address the crisis.