As part of its plan to track health outcomes among nearly 30,000 British Columbians over several decades, the BC Generations Project has launched a new Follow-Up Health & Lifestyle Questionnaire.

“It’s been six years since the very first participants joined the BC Generations Project and completed their baseline Health & Lifestyle Questionnaire,” explains Dr. Nhu Le. “It’s now time for us to check in with participants and collect updated information about their health status and health behaviours as they are today.”

As a longitudinal cohort study, the BC Generations Project is repeatedly collecting data (health information and biosamples) from the same group of individuals over several decades. The power of this approach is in its ability to track health changes and disease outcomes over time.

“As we add new information to our store of de-identified data, we create a more complete picture and a richer resource for research into many different chronic diseases,” says Dr. Trevor Dummer.

All Project participants will be asked to complete the questionnaire online. Like the baseline Health & Lifestyle Questionnaire, this questionnaire asks a range of questions related to participants’ health and lifestyle, including:

• Health status
• Personal and family medical history
• Prescription medications
• Health behaviours (sleep, UV exposure, nutrition, tobacco and alcohol use, and physical activity)
• Physical measures
• Demographic information

In addition to the topics from the baseline questionnaire, new questions have been added on mental health, marijuana and e-cigarette use.

Over the next several months, the Project will be in contact with participants regarding this important questionnaire. If you don’t hear from us, you are welcome to contact us through email or phone (1.877.675.8221).