Join ARC
What taking part actually involves
Most of what shapes brain health over a lifetime is not visible in a single visit. It shows up in patterns, measured on the same people year after year. That is what your participation provides, and it is the one thing a study cannot get any other way.
Here is exactly what is being asked of you, before you decide.
Ready to join?
Click here to sign your consent.
Start with the online consent form. It takes just a few minutes, and you can stop at any time before deciding to take part.
Sign your consentWho Can Join
Join ARC now
Joining ARC is voluntary, and our eligibility criteria are very broad to ensure that what we do benefits everyone.
To join ARC
Eligibility Criteria
You do not need a memory concern, a family history, or any prior contact with a doctor about your thinking. Healthy participants are not a control group here, they are the point. Joining ARC puts you on the study registry, which is the pool the more intensive parts of the lab invite from later.
You are 30 or older. The risk factors this study follows begin acting decades before anything is noticeable, which is why joining starts well before the ages dementia research usually begins.
You can complete surveys on your own device. A smartphone, laptop, or tablet. The questionnaires are online, so this is the one piece of equipment participation depends on.
To give a blood sample
Blood Draw
The blood draw is optional and you are never signed up for it by joining. If you are invited and it is not right for you, declining changes nothing about the rest of your participation.
You can travel to Harborview. Draws happen at a research lab in Seattle, and invitations go to participants living within travelling distance in an eligible zip code. We schedule the appointment, confirm it twice, and meet you there.
You weigh at least 110 pounds and are not pregnant. Below 110 pounds we can still run the clinical labs, just not the full research panel, which needs a larger sample.
You can fast for 12 hours beforehand. Nothing but water for 12 hours. Morning medications are fine, and we encourage you to bring something to eat for afterwards. If you take insulin, we ask you to make a plan with your own physician first.
Signing up takes a few minutes
Start with the online consent form. It takes just a few minutes, and you can stop at any time before deciding to take part.
Questions before you decide? The study team answers them directly, and asking does not sign you up for anything.Contact the study team now.
What We Do
Three kinds of information, collected the same way each time
Consistency is what makes a long study worth running. The same measures on the same people over years are what let a pattern separate itself from a coincidence.
Questionnaires
Your background, your health, and your lifestyle, including the everyday and social circumstances that shape brain health and rarely get measured alongside biology.
A cognitive measure
Short activities covering memory, thinking, and problem solving. They are not a test you can fail, and they are not a diagnosis.
A blood sample, if you choose
One small sample supports three things: standard clinical labs, research biomarkers tied to brain aging, and genetic analysis.
What the study then does with all of this, from the 220+ proteins read out of a single blood sample to the way samples are banked for later, is set out onwhat this study is. The science the measures are chosen from is onbrain health.
What It Asks Of You
A long study, in small pieces
The commitment is measured in years, but almost never in hours. Questionnaires are broken up specifically so that no single request takes much of your day.
When you join
15 to 20 minutes
The first set of questionnaires is the longest thing we will ask of you. You can stop and come back to it.
Through the year
10 minutes or less
Later questionnaires are deliberately short and spread out. Breaking them up is what keeps any single request small.
If you give a blood sample
One appointment
Blood draws are done at Harborview Medical Center in downtown Seattle. Appointments are short and on your schedule.
What You Receive
What comes back to you, and what does not
Research studies vary widely in what they return to the people in them. We try to be as clear and transparent as possible.
$25 for each blood draw
A Visa gift card on completion. Questionnaires and cognitive activities are not compensated, so the gift card is the only payment involved in taking part.
Your clinical lab results, if you want them
Cholesterol, blood sugar, vitamin B12, thyroid, and others. These are yours to keep and to share with your own doctor. You choose whether to receive them.
A summary of your thinking skills
Also by choice. It is a summary of how you did on the cognitive activities, not a clinical evaluation, and it does not come from a physician.
What does not come back to you
Genetic results and research biomarkers are not returned, to you or to your doctor. They are research measures rather than clinical tests, and reporting them would imply a certainty the science does not have.
Your Data
What you give us stays under your control
A study that runs for years asks something different from one that runs for an afternoon. These hold for the whole of it, and the consent document you sign is the binding version of each.
Your name is stored apart from your answers
Your data is kept under a study ID, and blood samples carry a separate identifier again. The link between them is held apart from the research data itself.
You can skip a question, or leave entirely
Any question can be left blank. Withdrawing takes one email or one call, never needs a reason, and has no effect on your medical care anywhere.
Samples are kept for future research
Blood is stored long term rather than used once, so that tests invented years from now can still be run on it. Worth knowing before you give a sample.