ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Researchers are looking into healthy millennials’ lung health for the first time.
The Lung Cohort Study, co-funded by the National Institute of Health and the American Lung Association, is observational. The goal is to research healthy young people between the ages of 25-35 throughout their lives.
“We’re starting with healthy young adults and trying to understand what keeps them healthy and what takes them off course from staying healthy,” said lead investigator, Dr. Mercedes Carnethon, PhD, professor and vice chair of preventive medicine at Northwestern University
Carnethon tells News 8, while most studies focus on disease, this one zeros in on healthy people to account for changes in habits and anything environmental like air pollution, or moving from state to state.
Since the study is national, there are different recruitment sites. News 8 spoke with the principal investigator for the University of Rochester Medical Center who says she appreciates the shift in focus to healthy individuals.
“I’m seeing people who already have developed a disease that needs to be treated,” said Dr. Sandhya Khurana, Professor of Pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Rochester, “but I think we should be viewing this with a lens of prevention.”
The study already has 1500 participants but investigators are working to recruit up to 4000. The primary focus is ensuring the cohort is diverse. That means, people with different jobs, education levels, races, and ethnicities.
“We only know what affects health among those people we have a chance to study,” said Carnethon, “and our exposures and our behaviors are very different based on these domains of socioeconomic status, and the other social determinants of health.”
For the study, participants will be evaluated and then re-evaluated every so often. Carnethon says that “after this initial commitment we tend to leave people alone, only contacting them annually to find out if there are any changes.”
For more information, or to become a participant, you can click here.
