BOSTON -- Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital is launching a massive effort to recruit 100,000 local patients for a study that will try to find genetic and environmental clues to both good and bad health.

Volunteers would be asked to give a blood sample and allow researchers access to their medical information.

“Our genes, our health, our community: what we want to do is integrate all of those components,” said Dr. Christine Seidman, director of Brigham and Women’s cardiovascular genetics division. “We want to understand genetics. We want to understand what makes people sick and what makes them healthy.”

The project, called OurGenes, is expected to last for decades. Seidman said she hopes various branches and departments within Brigham and Women’s will share information and research findings.

The hospital said it hopes to examine questions such as how behavior, lifestyle and environmental exposures interact with genetics to determine who will get which diseases.

Seidman said similar projects are being led in California by Kaiser Permanente and in Chicago by Northwestern University. This is the largest such undertaking in New England.

To learn more about possibly participating in OurGenes, call Brigham and Women’s Hospital at 617-525-4499.