Our proposed project is to develop a national primary care electronic health record data resource to allow a comprehensive accurate equitable and rapid assessment of US health

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H, CFDA 93.384) awarded The Leland Stanford Junior University a $6.47M cooperative agreement effective September 8, 2025, through September 7, 2030, to develop a National Primary Care Electronic Health Record (EHR) Data Resource. This initiative will create a comprehensive, open, and accessible data platform enabling rapid and equitable assessment of U.S. health outcomes by aggregating and analyzing primary care data across diverse geographic and demographic populations. The project addresses five core objectives: expanding primary care registry enrollment to increase geographic and demographic representation; enhancing EHR data through linkage with external datasets on preventative health behaviors and social determinants of health; validating data quality through external quantitative and qualitative sources; innovating secure data access technologies; and ensuring long-term sustainability through user-driven expansion of data scope.

The resource represents a significant methodological advancement by integrating multi-sector data partnerships, linking individual-level data to residential addresses, and developing synthetic data capabilities for broad dissemination while maintaining privacy protections. Stanford's work will prioritize measurement of non-healthcare factors substantially impacting population health and will include extensive validation to identify data gaps and assess generalizability across populations. This infrastructure will enable large-scale evaluation of health policies and programs, support chronic disease prevention and mental health research, and provide evidence-based guidance for structural health interventions benefiting the entire U.S. population.

This open and accessible data resource will facilitate significant advancements in chronic disease prevention mental health and the evaluation of the benefits of health policies and programs. Our five main objectives are to expand primary care registry enrollment by including more medical practices in order to capture the geographic and demographic diversity of the U.S. Enhance electronic health record data through linkage with additional data on factors driving preventative health behaviors and health validate this data by using external quantitative and qualitative datasets innovate with technology for data access to ensure secure full data access and enable a wide range of users to use this data to develop strategies for improving the health of the U.S. Population. This project will prioritize the measurement of factors outside the healthcare system that have a substantial impact on health and wellbeing. This high risk innovative approach goes beyond current data systems by forging partnerships across data sectors to link individual level data to exact addresses of residential location. A significant innovation in our proposal is the extensive data validation with multiple external qualitative and quantitative sources. This will help US understand who is missing from our data and how generalizable IT is across populations. Moreover we will develop new technology for creating synthetic data to share broadly with few restrictions while still protecting privacy. We will employ several strategies to ensure the sustainability of our approach continually expanding the data scope driven by user questions. This project will positively impact the entire U.S. Population by guiding structural health interventions that benefit all. IT will enable largescale evaluation of the health effects of environmental social and educational policies supporting evidence based primary care and advancing the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare. By addressing critical barriers in data collection and utilization IT has the potential to reverse stagnating life expectancy trends and improve mental health and well being over the next decade in the U.S.