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Welcome
to The Public Health Nutrition and Nutritional Epidemiology Unit

The Public Health Nutrition and Nutritional Epidemiology Unit was created in the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology of the University of Athens Medical School in 1999. The core faculty and staff of the Unit came from the research team who had been working in the Department of Nutrition and Biochemistry of the Hellenic National School of Public Health since 1977. Today, the Unit's scientific and technical personnel includes medical doctors, biologists, chemists, nutritionists, food technologists, health visitors, statisticians, a computer expert and lab technicians, as well as three administrators.

The Nutritional Epidemiology and Public Health Nutrition Unit has both research and educational responsibilities. The Unit is actively involved in the undergraduate and graduate training of medical doctors, through teaching in the context of courses in Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, as well as through the supervision of doctoral theses.

With respect to research, the Unit participates in the largest cohort investigation ever launched in Europe for the study of the associations between nutritional and biological factors on the one hand and chronic disease on the other, the EPIC study (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and nutrition). The Unit has recently been coordinating the EPIC - Elderly project, a nested-study to the EPIC project, which focuses on studying the potential role of nutrition on the health and longevity of Europeans over the age of 60 years. The Unit also coordinates the effort for the development of a European database of comparable nutritional data, which was initiated in the context of the European Union DAFNE (DAta Food NEtworking) projects. Furthermore, with the financial support of the Hellenic General Secretariat of Research and Technology, the Unit coordinates projects aiming at the recording and chemical analysis of Traditional Greek foods, and the updating of the Greek Food Composition Tables.

In the context of its activities in the field of public health and health education, the Nutritional Epidemiology and Public Health Nutrition Unit undertook the development of the draft of Dietary Guidelines for Adults in Greece. These guidelines were adopted and issued by the Supreme Scientific Health Council of the Hellenic Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1999.