Cohort profile: the Northwest China Real-world and Population-based Cohort

TL;DR

This large-scale prospective cohort study in Northwest China tracks over 13 million residents, integrating diverse health data to evaluate treatments, health policies, and risk factors over a five-year period.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, real-world dataset covering nearly all residents in Northwest China, enabling extensive health research and policy assessment.

Findings

Over 47 million person-years of follow-up

Nearly 14 million diagnoses recorded

Over 880,000 deaths documented

Abstract

The Northwest China Real-World and Population-based cohort is an ongoing prospective cohort with more than 25 million population, covering almost all residents across approximately 1.66 million square kilometers in northwest China; The cohort integrates data from various sources, including health profiles, examination records, electronic health records, mortality records, statistical yearbooks, and environmental datasets, covering comprehensive health-related factors such as demographics, lifestyle factors, family medical history, living conditions, enrollment in national public health services, physical examinations, blood assay tests, diagnostic assessments, disease outcomes, and cause-specific mortality. This real-world dataset can evaluate clinical treatment effectiveness and prognosis, assess impact of health policy, and investigate the health effects of multiple risk factors . From January 2019 to December 2023, the cohort has included 13,634,481 participants, accumulating 47,050,707 person-years of follow-up, with 13,598,407 medical diagnosis records and 881,114 recorded deaths. Cohort data are available upon request. De-identified and anonymized data are stored on local servers and accessed through a data-sharing platform, enabling users to utilize the data without direct access to the raw information. A description of the proposed research can be sent to Yining Yang & Qian Di.