It's a Sunday morning at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, a famous African-American church in the Harlem area of New York City. The organist plays as hundreds of worshippers stream into the pews. The Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts III steps to the pulpit.
"Now may we stand for our call to worship," says Butts, as he begins a powerful three-hour service filed with music, dancing, prayers and preaching. "How good and pleasant it is when all of God's children get together."
Then, about an hour into the service, Butts does something he has never done before. "I would like to introduce the Precision Medicine Initiative," he says, referring to a huge new project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. It's now called All of Us.
[For more on this story by ROB STEIN, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/he...tudy-henrietta-lacks]
Photo: Kolbi Brown (left), a program manager at Harlem Hospital in New York, helps Karen Phillips sign up to receive more information about the "All of Us" medical research program, during a block party outside the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Elias Williams for NPR
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