Rochester Epidemiology Project
organization
The Rochester Epidemiology Project (REP) is a unique records-linkage research infrastructure that has existed since 1966, and allows for population-based medical research in Olmsted County, Minnesota and an expanded region of 27 counties in Southern Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. The project has been continually funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1966. Specifically, the REP links medical data (diagnosis, procedure, prescription medication, laboratory testing) to unique persons across the many participating medical providers in the region. The project is a collaboration between Olmsted Medical Center, Mayo Clinic, Olmsted County Public Health Services, Mayo Clinic Health System, Zumbro Valley Health Center, and many other historical partners.
History
The REP was originally funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in 1966 under the direction of Dr. Leonard T. Kurland, a neurologist who started his career at the NIH and moved to Olmsted County, Minnesota when he realized the great benefit to medical research that a population-based records-linkage system could have. Dr. Kurland considered Olmsted County an optimal location for such a population-based research infrastructure because the county is relatively isolated from other metropolitan centers, almost all medical care is received within the county, and all medical specialties are available to county residents. More recently, the study funding source changed to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, and as of July 2010 the REP is funded by the National Institute on Aging. In September 2016, the REP celebrated 50 years of continuous NIH funding.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Rochester Epidemiology Project” is organization. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Rochester, Epidemiology and Project, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7353974. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 2010 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rochester Epidemiology Project” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.