Getting to the “Heart” of Cardiometabolic Health Disparities

NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series Annual Robert S. Gordon Jr. Lecture Cardiometabolic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease, are exceedingly common and are collectively considered the leading causes of death worldwide. In this lecture, Dr. Lisa Cooper will describe the current state of cardiometabolic health disparities among adults in the United States. She will then discuss how interventions to reduce cardiometabolic health disparities are designed, implemented, and evaluated, and how these interventions address contributors to disparities at multiple levels—from the behaviors of individuals and their family members; to health professionals and healthcare organizations; to communities and policy-making agencies. Drawing upon methods from epidemiology, health services research, clinical trials, social and behavioral science, community-based participatory research, and implementation science, she will describe how she and her colleagues and community partners have contributed to evidence regarding the actions of individual patients and healthcare professionals, healthcare systems, and community-based organizations, that are most effective for advancing cardiometabolic health equity. Finally, she will discuss how political, environmental, and social variables can either prevent or help to sustain and spread the uptake of evidence-based programs. Lisa A. Cooper, M.D., M.P.H., Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine