Friday, Jul 24, 2026 The claims desk. Receipts included. POWERED BY LENZ
IsThis

HEALTH

The Claim

About 16,000 children participated in the Bogalusa Heart Study over about 40 years.

The Short Version

The evidence does not support the claim as stated. Reliable sources consistently report more than 12,000 children in the Bogalusa Heart Study, while the figure above 16,000 refers to total participants overall. The study also spans roughly 50 years since 1973, although some older descriptions referred to nearly 40 years of follow-up.

Caveats

  • The claim conflates child participants with total participants; those are not the same figure in the cited sources.
  • The timeframe is outdated or incomplete: current official descriptions place the study at about 50 years, not about 40 years.
  • A partial truth remains: the study did follow participants from childhood for decades, but the specific numbers and duration in the claim are materially inaccurate.

The Receipts

  1. NCT00005129 | Bogalusa Heart Study

    ClinicalTrials.gov

  2. After 50 years of pioneering research in rural Louisiana, study pivots ...

    Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine

  3. Cohorts

    i3C Consortium

  4. The Bogalusa Heart Study, 1973-1982

    PubMed

  5. Bogalusa Heart Study - American College of Cardiology

    American College of Cardiology

  6. Research - Bogalusa Heart Study

    Bogalusa Heart Study

  7. Bogalusa Heart Study - Epidemiology & Community Health

    University of Minnesota

  8. Childhood cardiovascular health and subfertility: The Bogalusa Heart Study

    PubMed Central

  9. Impact - Bogalusa Heart Study

    Bogalusa Heart Study

  10. The Bogalusa Heart Study: Investigating Cardiovascular Health

    Bogalusa Heart Study

+ 5 more sources — see the full list on Lenz

Filed Under

Bogalusa Heart Study

More Fact Checks