Cohort Profile: The Doetinchem Cohort Study

Cohort Profile: The Doetinchem Cohort Study

Abstract

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association ß The Author 2008; all rights reserved. Advance Access publication 31 January 2008 International Journal of Epidemiology 2008;37:1236–1241 doi:10.1093/ije/dym292 COHORT PROFILE WMM Verschuren,* A Blokstra, HSJ Picavet and HA Smit Accepted 10 December 2007 How did the study come about? The origin of the Doetinchem Cohort Study lies within the Monitoring Project on Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors (MP-CVDRF), which was aimed at providing prevalence estimates of cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as smoking, blood pressure and serum cholesterol levels. During 1987–91 each year an ageand sex-stratified random sample of men and women aged 20–59 years, was invited to participate. The MP-CVDRF was carried out in three towns in The Netherlands (Amsterdam in the west, Doetinchem in the east and Maastricht in the south), and from each of the three towns, about 12 000 men and women were examined. In the subsequent Monitoring Project on Chronic Disease Risk Factors (MORGEN-project), carried out from 1993–97, in Doetinchem only respondents from the MP-CVDRF were invited to participate, while in Amsterdam and Maastricht again random samples from the general population were examined. The protocol was extended, because the focus broadened