A cohort study is a particular form of longitudinal study that samples a cohort, performing a cross-section at intervals through time. It is a type of panel study where the individuals in the panel share a common characteristic.
The Women's Health Initiative (WHI) was a series of clinical studies initiated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1991, to address major health issues causing morbidity and mortality in postmenopausal women. It consisted of three clinical trials (CT) and an observational study (OS). In particular, randomized controlled trials were designed and funded that addressed cardiovascular disease, cancer, and osteoporosis.
The Framingham Heart Study is a long-term, ongoing cardiovascular cohort study of residents of the city of Framingham, Massachusetts. The study began in 1948 with 5,209 adult subjects from Framingham, and is now on its third generation of participants. Prior to the study almost nothing was known about the epidemiology of hypertensive or arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Much of the now-common knowledge concerning heart disease, such as the effects of diet, exercise, and common medications such as aspirin, is based on this longitudinal study. It is a project of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, in collaboration with Boston University. Various health professionals from the hospitals and universities of Greater Boston staff the project.
Sir Richard Peto is an English statistician and epidemiologist who is Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, England.
The Nurses' Health Study is a series of prospective studies that examine epidemiology and the long-term effects of nutrition, hormones, environment, and nurses' work-life on health and disease development. The studies have been among the largest investigations into risk factors for major chronic diseases ever conducted. The Nurses' Health Studies have led to many insights on health and well-being, including cancer prevention, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. They have included clinicians, epidemiologists, and statisticians at the Channing Laboratory, Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, and several Harvard-affiliated hospitals, including Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Children's Hospital Boston, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
C. Arden Pope III is an American professor of economics at Brigham Young University and one of the world's foremost experts in environmental science. He received his B.S. from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1978 and his Ph.D. in economics and statistics from Iowa State University in 1981. Although his research includes many papers on topics in the fields in which he was trained—environmental economics, resource economics, and agricultural economics—he is better known for his cross-disciplinary work in environmental epidemiology and public health. He is world-renowned for his seminal work on the effects of particulate air pollution on mortality and health. His articles have helped establish the connection between air pollution and health problems, including cancer, cardiovascular, and pulmonary disease. These research findings have influenced environmental policy in the United States and Europe, contributing to the establishment of emission standards for particulate matter pollution.
Air pollution is the contamination of air due to the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. It is also the contamination of indoor or outdoor surrounding either by chemical activities, physical or biological agents that alters the natural features of the atmosphere. There are many different types of air pollutants, such as gases, particulates, and biological molecules. Air pollution can cause diseases, allergies, and even death to humans; it can also cause harm to other living organisms such as animals and crops, and may damage the natural environment or built environment. Air pollution can be caused by both human activities and natural phenomena.
Ultrafine particles (UFPs) are particulate matter of nanoscale size (less than 0.1 μm or 100 nm in diameter). Regulations do not exist for this size class of ambient air pollution particles, which are far smaller than the regulated PM10 and PM2.5 particle classes and are believed to have several more aggressive health implications than those classes of larger particulates. In the EU UFP's in ambient air are empirically defined by a technical specification. The important detail is the definition of size, stated: "The lower and upper sizes considered within this document are 7 nm and a few micrometres, respectively". Although the most common referral to UFP is "less than 0.1μm", this is incorrect for ambient air in the EU.
The Seven Countries Study is an epidemiological longitudinal study directed by Ancel Keys at what is today the University of Minnesota Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene & Exercise Science (LPHES). Begun in 1956 with a yearly grant of US$200,000 from the U.S. Public Health Service, the study was first published in 1978 and then followed up on its subjects every five years thereafter.
Frank B. Hu is a Chinese American nutrition and diabetes researcher. He is Chair of the Department of Nutrition and the Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School.
Peter Verveer Tishler, M.D. is a researcher in human genetics and orphan diseases, educator, and clinician especially in the areas of genetic diseases, including polycystic kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Fabry disease, and the porphyrias.
Eugenia E. “Jeanne” Calle (1952–2009) was an American cancer epidemiologist.
Douglas William Dockery is an American epidemiologist and the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Environmental Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).
Sarah B. Henderson is a senior environmental health scientist at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and a public health professor at the University of British Columbia.
Elizabeth Anne (Lianne) Sheppard is an American statistician. She specializes in biostatistics and environmental statistics, and in particular in the effects of air quality on health. She is a Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and a Professor of Biostatistics in the University of Washington School of Public Health. In 2021, Dr. Sheppard was named to the Rohm & Haas Endowed Professorship of Public Health Sciences.
Donna Spiegelman is a biostatistician and epidemiologist who works at the interface between the two fields as a methodologist, applying statistical solutions to address potential biases in epidemiologic studies.
The Harvard "Six Cities" study was a major epidemiological study of over 8,000 adults in six American cities that helped to establish the connection between fine-particulate air pollution and reduced life expectancy. Widely acknowledged as a landmark piece of public health research, it was initiated by Benjamin G. Ferris, Jr at Harvard School of Public Health and carried out by Harvard's Douglas Dockery, C. Arden Pope of Brigham Young University, Ferris himself, Frank E. Speizer, and four other collaborators, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993. Following a lawsuit by The American Lung Association, the study, and its various follow-ups, led to a tightening of pollution standards by the US Environmental Protection Agency. This prompted an intense backlash from industry groups in the late 1990s, culminating in a Supreme Court case, in what Science magazine termed "the biggest environmental fight of the decade".
Francine Laden is an American epidemiologist who is Professor of Environmental Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research has investigated the environmental epidemiology of chronic disease. She serves as co-director of the Harvard University and Boston University center for research on environmental and social stressors in housing across the life course. Laden has also served on the United States Environmental Protection Agency advisory board.
Susan Hankinson is an American cancer researcher who is the Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research considers cancer epidemiology and the etiology of breast cancer. Her work has demonstrated the relationship between hormones and breast cancer risk. In 2023, she was awarded the American Association for Cancer Research Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention.
Lester Barnard Lave was an American economist who helped pioneer the field of environmental economics, notably the idea that environmental problems have quantifiable economic costs. In August 1970, over two decades before the Harvard Six Cities study definitively settled the issue, Lave and his graduate student Eugene P. Seskin published research suggesting that air pollution in American cities was causing higher death rates and attempted to calculate its economic cost. Lave went on to publish books and papers on many other environmental issues, including toxic chemicals, soil carbon, and electric cars, and studied methodological tools such as cost-benefit and risk analysis. At the time of his death, he was Harry B. and James H. Higgins Professor of Economics at the Tepper School of Business, professor of engineering and public policy, director of the Green Design Institute, and co-director of the Electricity Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon University.
