PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
The “Deep South,” including Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, has the highest rates of obesity, diabetes,
and hypertension in the nation. As a result, life expectancy in the Deep South is substantially lower than other
regions, and this discrepancy is even greater for Black Americans. The mission of the Deep South Center to
Reduce Disparities in Chronic Diseases (P50MD017338) is to promote health equity and reduce the burden
of cardiometabolic diseases across the Deep South. The Center focuses on the prevention, treatment, and
management of cardiometabolic diseases among Black Americans and low-income populations who suffer
disproportionately from these conditions in our tri-state region. The Center is unified thematically through the
application of the precision public health approach across the care continuum to achieve health equity,
defined as “providing the right intervention to the right population at the right time”. This approach
acknowledges the importance of context, culture, individual beliefs, and preferences as well as the need for
multi-level and multi-domain interventions. The Center brings together a trans-disciplinary team of
investigators from 4 institutions in 3 contiguous states (the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Tuskegee
University, Louisiana’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center, and the University of Mississippi Medical
Center) as well as regional non-academic partners to extend cardiometabolic research into real-world
community and clinical settings. To accomplish its mission, the Center currently includes 3 cores
(Administrative Core, Investigator Development Core, and Community Engagement Core) and 3 R01-level
research projects, all of which focus on community- or clinic-based interventions for cardiometabolic diseases
across the care continuum. This competitive revision builds on the Center’s current work to expand its reach
with the addition of four interrelated pilot intervention trials evaluating novel therapeutic interventions for the
prevention and management of cardiometabolic diseases among Black Americans. These projects are led by
four productive and promising junior investigators committed to health equity research, which further supports
the Center’s objectives to grow the number of health equity researchers in the region. Given the significant
health disparities in cardiometabolic diseases evident in the Deep South coupled with the infrastructure and
collaborations provided by the Center for these new investigators, this competitive revision will further expand
the impact of these regional efforts to improve health equity for cardiometabolic outcomes.