“The Ontario Cohord Consortium: A Platform for Innovation in Chronic Disease Prevention”

Purpose Understanding risk factors that initiate or accelerate chronic diseases is essential for developing high impact prevention and detection strategies. The dynamic processes of disease and disability can only be appropriately examined through longitudinal research that captures the changing individual within a changing social context, and incorporates multiple levels of inquiry – at the level of the genome, the individual, and the society. We need well-designed, large-scale population-based prospective studies involving the best science from multiple disciplines. We describe the developmental phase of the Ontario Cohort Consortium, a platform for innovative, multidisciplinary cohort research in chronic disease prevention. Methods A description of the goals and objectives, governance and leadership structure, design options, methods of recruitment, data collection and storage, partnerships and policies to produce a detailed protocol for a chronic disease cohort research platform. Results We summarize the lessons learned in developing a distributed, multi-disciplinary cohort research initiative and plans for the long-term program. We will also provide a progress update on the activities of working groups identifying recruitment options (including aboriginal populations), biospecimen collection, processing, and storage options for genetic and biomarker studies for exposure, susceptibility and effect, options for interventions (community and individual), lifestyle and environmental exposures collection and measurement, and ethics and quality assurance. Conclusion Developing a prospective, multidisciplinary cohort research platform to understand chronic disease etiology, identify biomarkers for early detection, and evaluate interventions in disease prevention, require a well-coordinated and sustainable research program that emphasizes excellence in science and leadership, harmonization of data collection and measurement, effective communications, and partnerships with other cohort projects regionally, nationally and internationally.