The Epidemiology and Genetics Core serves three primary functions:

• Provide computing and data analysis services and guidance, as well as maintaining a library containing four large longitudinal data sets and public access data from national surveys that bear on obesity that are available for data analysis of nutritional and lifestyle determinants of obesity as well as morbidity and mortality consequences of obesity.
  
  
• Support BONRC clinical and epidemiologic studies that require high-throughput genotyping and genetic data analyses.
  
  
• Provide support and an environment stimulating interest and training in obesity epidemiology and genetics research for junior faculty and doctoral students.

• Provide consultations on clinical and epidemiologic study design, data analyses, and power calculations for BONRC members.
  
  
• Provide access to large longitudinal datasets at Harvard for potential collaborations.  The cohorts include the Nurses’ Health Study, Nurses’ Health Study II, Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study, and the Grow-up Today (GUTs) Study. Detailed and repeated measures of diet, lifestyle, BMI, waist/hip circumference, weight change, etc. have been collected in these cohorts.
  
  
• Provide efficient access to and the liaison with the Harvard Partner Genotyping Facility for high-throughput genotyping of clinical and epidemiologic samples in obesity-related studies at the lowest possible price for BONRC users.
  
  
• Collaborate with BONRC members for the purpose of testing and replicating novel genetic associations of obesity and its related phenotypes.
  
  
• Provide genotype data to the BONRC members for the purpose of pooling analyses or meta-analyses.
  
  
• Provide efficient access to and the liaison with Harvard School of Public Health Bioinformatics Core Group for consultation services related to data management and analyses of high-dimensional genotyping data and use of bioinformatics tool, including consultations on candidate gene and tag-SNP selections and genotype-phenotype data analyses.