Stephanie Smith-Warner

PhD

Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health

Senior Lecturer

PLCO (Learn more about this study)

PLCO-286

Jul 28, 2017

Pooling Project of Prospective Studies of Diet and Cancer (DCPP)

This proposal focuses on evaluating the relationships between dietary, anthropometric, and other lifestyle factors and cancers of interest, cardiovascular disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in the Pooling Project of Prospective Studies of Diet and Cancer. Both exposure and covariate definitions will be standardized across studies in all analyses. Evaluation of these associations has substantial public health significance. Identifying ways to prevent the occurrence of these outcomes through lifestyle factors such as diet represents an important public health strategy. The project only includes prospective studies because case-control studies (which have been commonly conducted to examine associations between lifestyle factors and risk of various diseases) are more susceptible to recall and selection bias than prospective cohort studies. The increased statistical power gained from combining data from the multiple cohort studies enables the examination of associations within population subgroups (such as older age groups, smokers, overweight/obese individuals, non-users of supplements) which may potentially identify high risk groups and across tumor subtypes (such as by stage and grade), as well as investigation of less common outcomes. These analyses should contribute to identifying lifestyle behaviors for preventing these diseases.