Source: SYSU-JHU Collaboration Program
Written by: Chen Jingxue, Zhou Qian
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

After the summer break, the SYSU Clinical Research Salon held its 7th salon on September 23, 2015, which is also the first time of the new semester. Hosted by Prof. Chao Cheng and Prof. Yan Guo, the salon invited Prof. Yuming Chen from the School of Public Health to share his experience of cohort study in clinical research. Held in the Reception Room on North Campus, the salon attracted more than 100 doctors, teachers as well as medical students.

Prof. Chen’s main research interest is nutrition and chronic disease, risk factors of chronic diseases and their corresponding control measures. In 2007, Prof. Chen started a prospective cohort study focusing on the common factors of chronic diseases. Supported by SYSU’s clinical research funding, the “5010 project”, this cohort study is expected to be finished in 2015. In this study, researchers have recruited around 3,500 community residents to look into multi-factors including demography, sociology and nutrition indexes. In every three years, researchers would follow up the recruited residents to gather information of factors such as the development of diseases, quality of life, psychological well-being and obesity, etc. Therefore, they are able to analyze the association between factors and outcomes. On the basis of this study, Prof. Chen applied for three projects supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and published 16 SCI articles. Besides, 10 more articles are in the stages of submission or editing.

In the salon, Prof. Chen introduced the overall working flow of a cohort study, including study design, implementation and reports writing, etc. More importantly, using his own experience, Prof. Chen showed the audience how to carry out a long-term research along with fruitful findings and outcomes in a prospective cohort study. Impressed by Prof. Chen’s speech, many students and teachers raised related questions of cohort study in the Q&A section.

SYSU Clinical Research Salon is an academic activity initiated by the visiting fellows of the SYSU-JHU Collaboration Program. They hope that the salon can bring the advanced study method and positive research atmosphere to SYSU and serve as a bridge to connect all the faculty members who are interested in clinical research. The academic salon is scheduled to take place on the first Wednesday of every month. Online videos of the salons are also available on the website: http://lecture.sysu.edu.cn/. For latest salon announcement, you may visit the webpage on SYSU North Campus website: http://med.sysu.edu.cn/ztbd/sysuhz/index.htm.