Busselton Health Study

The Busselton Health Study is a long-term, on-going health cohort study of residents of the Western Australian city of Busselton. Over 20,000 Busselton residents have participated in surveys concerning such health topics as cardiovascular disease, pulmonary function, diabetes, and cancer, resulting in over 400 publications. The program was initiated by Kevin Cullen, a local general practitioner, and is administered by the Busselton Population Medical Research Institute, which was established in 2000 as the Busselton Population Medical Research Foundation, and the School of Population and Global Health, University of Western Australia. Data from the study was used in a 1996 paper in Nature showing some of the first genetic links to asthma, along with a 1999 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that was the first to describe the impact of the newly discovered HFE gene causing HFE hereditary haemochromatosis on a population with normal rates of symptoms.