Prof Hunter speaks with ecancer about the need to perform long-term studies to assess the impact of lifestyle choices on health and cancer risk.

Starting from recent genetic insights into patients and disease, he outlines the broad social factors which act as population-level risk factors, in varying degrees, and the essential role of clearly communicating behaviours which are confirmed to confer a risk or protective association to people.

Prof Hunter summarises the international collaborations which have made such broad studies of epidemiology possible, with some variation in data reporting and environmental factors to be accounted for, and the utility of digital records to provide the necessary insights for even larger trials.