The VHS aimed to perform a chemical mass-screening to identify pre-symptomatic disease, especially different types of cardiovascular disease, malignancies, and inflammatory conditions. Participants were adults who lived in the county of Värmland and parts of the county of Gävleborg in Sweden. Between 1962 and 1965, over 97,000 participants completed a baseline assessment. All participants have been followed in national registers until the end of 2005 for in-hospital registered diagnoses. The cohort is also linked with data from the Swedish population and housing census in 1960.