All countries have the goal of preventing the chronic diseases that afflict our ageing populations. To implement effective prevention programs, Ministries of Health and other decision makers need detailed information about the health status and life style behaviours of the populations. Population cohorts provide the tool for generating this information and for monitoring the effectiveness of any interventions taken to ameliorate chronic diseases. 

Modern biomedical research has shown that all chronic diseases are very complex and do not have a common cause. To understand the complexity of chronic diseases requires very large cohorts as well as genetically and geographically diverse populations. Clearly such studies are not possible in a single country and must be done as international collaborations. Fortunately, several years ago a group of countries came together to begin collaborating on large population studies, and they formed an organization, The Public Population Project in Genomics (P³G). This international collaboration currently involves over 40 countries, including Luxembourg, incorporating cohorts with more than 5 million participants. The members of the P³G consortium have agreed to harmonize their collection of data so that scientists in one country can easily compare their data to that collected in other countries.

To maximize the power of the Luxembourg Cohort and to minimize the cost, the Luxembourg Cohort will be modeled after the ongoing cohorts in Germany, Canada and Sweden. Following these models, the Personalized Medicine Consortium (PMC) in collaboration with CRP-Santé plans to create a population cohort in Luxembourg initially of 10,000 individuals selected at random from the population. After signing a consent form that explains the goals of the study and the nature of the participation, each individual will complete a detailed questionnaire involving health status, diet, exercise, etc. In addition, nurses will make some physical measurements (height, weight, blood pressure, etc.) and will collect biological specimens such as a blood or urine sample.