Cohort profile: The ‘Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra’ (SUN) study

The SUN study began at the Universidad de Navarra’s Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health and has since integrated other universities (Santiago de Compostela, Cantabria, Las Palmas, Jaen and Saragossa). The motivation behind its development, dating back to the late 1990s, was the lack of scientific evidence detailing the benefits of the Mediterranean Food Pattern. Starting a Spanish cohort was a unique opportunity to sample participants who are more likely to follow variations of this food pattern. To explore this idea further, Professor Miguel Ángel Martı́nez travelled to the Harvard School of Public Health to learn about similar large cohort studies currently being conducted in the US, such as the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals’ Follow-up study. An outline of the SUN study was designed during his sabbatical at Harvard.