The HALE Project
Healthy aging: a Longitudinal study in Europe
The HALE project started in 2001 and consists of three longitudinal studies: the Seven Countries Study, the Finland Italy Netherlands Elderly (FINE) study and the Survey Europe on Nutrition in the Elderly: a Concerted Action (SENECA) study, directed by the Professors Wija van Staveren and Lisette de Groot from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. The project was funded by the European Union and Daan Kromhout was the principal investigator.
The aim of the HALE project was to study changes in, and determinants of, usual and healthy aging in 13 European countries.
Combining data
The HALE project used data collected in the Seven Countries Study; 7047 men aged 40-59 at baseline in five European countries (Finland, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Serbia) who were followed for 35 years. For the elderly participating in the FINE and SENECA study the data of 3805 men and women aged 70-89 at baseline were pooled. The baseline surveys were carried out in 1988-1991 and the participants were re-examined after 5 and 10 years. This project included men from 13 European countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland).
Other studies on healthy aging:
The Zutphen Elderly Study
The Zutphen Elderly Study is an extension of the original Zutphen Study with a sample of the same age. The Zutphen Elderly Study was the only cohort of the FINE study and the HALE project in which detailed information on the diet of all the participants was collected four times between 1985 and 2000.
The HALE project
The HALE project (Healthy aging: a Longitudinal study in Europe) started in 2001 as an extension of three longitudinal studies: the Seven Countries Study, the Finland Italy Netherlands Elderly (FINE) Study and the Survey Europe on Nutrition in the Elderly: a Concerted Action study (SENECA).