WS 23 - Population based Cohort Studies and Health Prediction

Although life expectancy in most countries has continuously increased over the past decades, the importance of chronic diseases will considerably grow over the next 30 years due to the demographic changes in many countries. Effective strategies for the prevention of chronic diseases require accurate data about the causes of these diseases and about the potential magnitude of decrease in chronic disease occurrence by avoiding major risk factors. Prospective cohorts represent the optimal design for epidemiologic studies on the causes of chronic diseases. Such cohort studies have a long tradition and already provided important information on risk factors for decision making in many areas, such as lifestyle (e.g., smoking), nutrition (e.g., obesity), environmental factors (e.g., air pollution), or medicine (e.g., high blood pressure).

Yet, the etiology of many diseases is still not completely understood, and many risk factors are only incompletely characterized. In addition, the rapid advancement of modern high-throughput laboratory techniques and computational developments hold promise for more precise risk characterization in the field of personalized prevention. Over the past years, many countries have therefore supported the implementation of newer, large-scale cohort studies. The current workshop will present and discuss current opportunities and challenges of large population based cohort studies from different angles, including science and policy. This includes discussion of the experience of longer established cohort studies, as well as of expectations from newer large-scale cohort studies.