Cooperative health research in the Augsburg region
Cooperative health research in the Augsburg region ( KORA for short ) is a national and international research platform of the Helmholtz Zentrum München , on which studies on population-related health research are carried out. The platform emerged from the international MONICA study in 1996. It comprises four large population-based cohort studies with a total of over 18,000 participants from the study region, as well as an epidemiological myocardial infarction register that has been continuously maintained since 1984. The overall aim of the KORA research is to develop new approaches in the area of prevention of chronic diseases and to improve health care.
Study participants
The study region includes the city of Augsburg as well as the districts of Augsburg and Aichach-Friedberg with a total of over 600,000 inhabitants. The KORA participants represent a random sample from the 25 to 74-year-old population. The initial examinations have been carried out since 1984 in four waves, each five years apart. All cohort participants are questioned in writing about their health at regular intervals of several years, and some are examined again. This can be used to describe the course of health over periods of up to more than 20 years.
Research topics
The main topics of the KORA studies are questions about the development and course of chronic diseases, in particular heart attacks and diabetes mellitus , but also about other common diseases. For this purpose, risk factors from the area of health behavior (including smoking, diet, exercise), environmental factors (including air pollution, noise) and genetics are researched. From the perspective of health services research , questions of the use and costs of health care as well as health-related quality of life are examined.