The Howard University Family Study (HUFS) is a study of African American families and unrelated individuals from the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area [Adeyemo et al., 2009]. In the first phase of recruitment, the HUFS enrolled and examine a randomly ascertained cohort of 350 African American families with members in multiple generations. Families were not ascertained based on any phenotype. In the second phase of recruitment, additional unrelated individuals from the same geographic area were enrolled to facilitate nested case-control study designs. The enrollment procedures (questionnaires, clinical measurements, and lab assays) for unrelated individuals were identical to those for the families. The total number of recruited individuals was 2,028, of which 1,976 remained after data cleaning. Ethical approval was obtained from the Howard University Institutional Review Board and written informed consent was obtained from each participant.
