Group co-leader: Pilar Amiano Etxezarreta

Dep. Health – Subdirection PH Gipuzkoa E-mail p-amiano@euskadi.eus

Group co-leader: Ana María Jiménez Zabala, Ph.D.

Dep. Health – Subdirection PH Gipuzkoa E-mail am-jimenez@euskadi.eus

 Communication to the participants of the EPIC-Gipuzkoa study – CORDELIA Project (Spanish version)

Strategic Objectives

• To generate scientific knowledge that is directly relevant to controlling chronic diseases, which are the main causes of loss of health and the use of Health Services in Spain; also to generate scientific knowledge about these communicable diseases that can act as a base on which to support the actions carried out by the Health Authorities.
• To promote cooperative research among different groups, encouraging collaboration between researchers and boosting the internationalisation of their activities, and to develop strategies to improve the researchers’ scientific capacities.
• To assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the interventions carried out with a Public Health services perspective.
• To foster the transfer of knowledge to the Health Service to help design and implement health policies.

Specific Objectives

Epidemiology and surveillance of communicable diseases:

• Survey of seroprevalence in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.
• Study of the effectiveness of the flu vaccine (cycEVA).
• Tuberculosis and social inequality in Gipuzkoa in the period 2003-2009.
• Study of the high incidence of cases of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.

Epidemiology and control of chronic diseases:

• Strategy integrated into the municipal health area to promote physical exercise in fragile elderly people. Tipi-tapa.
• Study of the distribution of COPD and asthma in Gipuzkoa.
• Escape (European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects).
• Assessment of the equity, variability and results between centres and Autonomous Communities in Spain.
• Preparation of cancer profiles in different regions.
• Socio-economic inequalities in the risk of cancer.
• Assessment of the health and cost benefits at a population level of the early breast cancer detection programme in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.
• MCC-SPAIN Population multi-case control study, including tumours with a high incidence in Spain.
• Contaminants and cancer: biomarkers of exposure, genetic susceptibility and early damage markers.
• Epidemiology of cardiovascular diseases. Linked with the EPIC-Heart and EPIC-CVD projects. Study of the association between alcohol consumption, meat/protein consumption, fish/omega-3 consumption and stroke in the Spanish cohort of the EPIC study.
• Surveillance of accidents in people over the age of 64 and resident in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country through a lookout network.
• Ageing and neurodegenerative diseases.
• Social networks for elderly people: identification, characterisation and analysis of their relationship with lifestyle habits related to health.

Nutritional epidemiology:

• Alcohol consumption and genetic susceptibility: Case-control study.
• Development of EPic-soft: diet assessment methodology.

Main lines of research

• Epidemiology and surveillance of infectious and communicable diseases:
  • Flu.
  • Vaccine-preventable diseases caused by viruses (measles, rubella and mumps) or bacteria (whooping cough, pneumococcal disease or meningococcal disease).
  • Epidemic outbreaks
  • Tuberculosis.
• Epidemiology and Control of Chronic Diseases:
  • Environmental and genetic determining factors of cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
  • Other chronic disorders of high social impact.
  • Eating habits and their effect on health.
  • Epidemiology and prevention of accidental injuries.
  • Assessment of quality of care and quality of life.
  • Inequalities in health according to social class, gender, geographical location and environment.
  • Epidemiology of neurodegenerative diseases. Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease and other cognitive disorders.
  • Genetic-environmental interaction in chronic diseases.
• Nutritional epidemiology:
  • Diet and chronic diseases: cancer, cardiovascular or diabetes.
  • Research in methodology to assess diet: new instruments.
  • Assessment of diet in epidemiological case-control studies and cohorts.