New genetic ancestry data to tackle health inequalities
- 15 June 2026
- Our Future Health has released genetic ancestry data from 755,000 participants to support research into disease and health inequalities
- The programme has expanded its genetic dataset from 700,000 to 159 million variants using imputation techniques
- More than two million participants have completed health questionnaires, with new cancer, cholesterol and hospital data added
Our Future Health has released new genetic ancestry data from 755,000 participants, enabling researchers to tackle health inequalities and accelerate disease discovery.
The UK research programme, which aims to build a comprehensive health research resource, has used genetic information to infer participants’ ancestral backgrounds, providing a more detailed picture than self-reported ethnicity data alone.
Researchers will now be able to analyse genetic ancestry alongside health, lifestyle and environmental information to better understand differences in disease risk, treatment response and health outcomes across diverse populations.
The latest release also expands the genetic data available through the programme’s Trusted Research Environment.
Using imputation techniques, the number of genetic variants available for analysis has increased from approximately 700,000 to 159 million, enabling more detailed studies of the genetic factors linked to disease.
Dr Raghib Ali, chief executive of Our Future Health, said: “The availability of detailed genetic data is key to enabling cutting-edge research and is the number one thing that scientists tell us will help them to progress faster.
“The large and detailed dataset in Our Future Health allows researchers to learn more about rarer diseases, such as pancreatic cancer. While less common, it is the UK’s fifth biggest cancer killer.
“We look forward to supporting researchers to unlock the power of this data to discover new ways to treat and prevent disease, helping people to live healthier lives for longer.”
Our Future Health said the enhanced dataset would support large-scale research projects, particularly for rarer conditions where larger participant numbers are required to generate meaningful findings.
Alongside the genetic updates, the programme has surpassed two million participants who have completed health and lifestyle questionnaires. Our Future Health said this makes it the first research cohort globally to make questionnaire data available at this scale.
The dataset allows researchers to explore interactions between genetics, lifestyle, environment and health outcomes.
New clinical data has also been added, including point-of-care cholesterol test results from 1.2 million participants. Data quality measures, including the exclusion of extreme values and recalculation of LDL cholesterol measurements, have been applied to improve reliability for research use.
Cancer research is another area expected to benefit from the expanded dataset. The number of participants with linked cancer records has increased to 190,000, up from 120,900, while cancer registry information now spans 38 years, covering the period from 1985 to 2023.
Additional clinic measurement variables and publication-ready hospital data for 2024/25 have also been incorporated.
Since the previous data release in December 2025, participant numbers across the programme have continued to grow.
After reaching a milestone of one million volunteers in November 2023, the Our Future Health database now contains geographic data from almost 1.98 million people, genetic data from 755,000 participants and clinic measurement records from more than 1.5 million individuals.
The programme said the expanded resource could support research into new approaches to disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment and help address inequalities in health outcomes across the UK population.
