Mission
The Kavli HUMAN Project will unlock entirely new avenues of research into human health and behavior only achievable through the analysis of a large, interdisciplinary set of measurements collected on a single group of people over the span of decades. The first study of its kind, we will measure as many aspects as possible of 10,000 New York City residents in approximately 4,000 households to understand the linkages between behavior, health, and our environment, and in doing so enable the development of new theories, therapeutics, and policy recommendations currently unattainable through traditional studies of human beings.
About the Kavli HUMAN Project
What are the roots of human behavior and how does it impact our health? How do we make decisions, and what forces shape those decisions? How can we apply what we learn about human health and behavior to inform and improve public policy to make it more effective? The Kavli HUMAN Project (KHP) aims to better understand the complex, interwoven, causative roots of human health and behavior using interdisciplinary big data analytics. We propose to gather diverse information about a large set of families within a major metropolitan area at an unprecedented level of breadth and detail. This study will provide new insights and understanding into how our biology, our environment, and our behavior interact to determine our health. The Project is the first truly comprehensive large-scale survey intended to characterize the major forces that shape the human condition. Datasets will be gathered from medical records, genetic and microbiome data, patterns of physical activity, psychological profiling, educational tracking, economic activity, employment, geolocation and environmental sensors, and social networks for 10,000 people living in New York City.
What makes the Kavli HUMAN Project unique is the combined depth and breadth of data types that will offer unique insights into factors which are known to influence individual health but which have only rarely been studied and have never been integrated on such a broad scale. Previous longitudinal surveys have revealed important biological factors in cardiac health or social factors in retirement choices, but these studies have all been limited in scope—no single repository contains a complete record of the health, education, genetics, environmental, and lifestyle profiles of all individuals within such a large group. Recent expansions in electronic record keeping, new methods for the management and analysis of big datasets, and advances in mobile data collection offer the opportunity for large-scale information gathering at a relatively low cost. Now is the time to capitalize on these technological leaps and to create a data repository with sufficient breadth and depth to shed a more precise light on the multiple forces that shape the human condition. Together we will generate new knowledge, therapeutics, and evidenced-based public policies to not only understand the human condition, but also improve it.