Anne Thorndike, MD, MPH is a practicing general internist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and an
Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. The purpose of this K24 mid-career investigator
award is to support Dr. Thorndike’s mentorship and patient-oriented research focused on health behaviors and
social determinants of health in the prevention and treatment of cardiometabolic disease. Over the past 10
years, her research in workplace and community settings has tested novel behavioral strategies to promote
healthy dietary intake and other healthy behaviors to prevent chronic disease, particularly in low-income
populations with high prevalence of food insecurity and other unmet health-related social needs. Many of these
strategies, such as traffic-light food labeling and choice architecture (product placement), have been broadly
disseminated through academic, governmental, and lay publications. Dr. Thorndike is a dedicated mentor, and
she has supported over 25 junior faculty, medical residents, postdoctoral fellows, and students. Her mentees
have written 19 first author papers (5 in process) and have received 5 NIH K23 awards (1 in review). In this
K24 application, Dr. Thorndike proposes a mentoring, career development, and research plan with inter-related
goals that will help advance the research of Dr. Thorndike and her mentees to address some of the most
intractable behavioral and social factors that contribute to cardiometabolic disease disparities. The overall
objectives of the K24 award are: 1) To enable Dr. Thorndike to dedicate 25% protected time for mentoring
early-career investigators conducting patient-oriented research focused on health behaviors and social
determinants of cardiometabolic health, 2) To have a platform for mid-career professional development and
training, in collaboration with expert collaborators and co-mentors, and 3) To integrate her existing NIH-funded
research with new research supported by this award that will support a future R01 submission. The proposed
research uses mixed methods to develop a community health worker (CHW) nutrition intervention for
community health center patients experiencing uncontrolled hypertension and food insecurity. Research Aim 1
will leverage the existing longitudinal “LiveWell” cohort of over 1,000 community health center patients (R01
DK124145, Thorndike) to conduct formative research that will inform the development of the CHW nutrition
intervention. Using the infrastructure of an existing MGH CHW hypertension program, Research Aim 2 will be a
randomized 6-month pilot study to determine feasibility and acceptability of delivering a nutrition intervention
with CHWs and to determine preliminary effectiveness of the intervention on patients’ dietary intake, blood
pressure, body mass index, and depression. Dr. Thorndike’s ongoing NIH-funded research and proposed new
research provide opportunities for mentorship in patient-oriented research focused on the development and
implementation of interventions that will improve outcomes and reduce socioeconomic disparities in
cardiometabolic health.