NIMHD Adjunct Investigator Program

National Institute On Minority Health And Health Disparities

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

In FY23, we continued to fund eight adjunct Investigators to conduct health disparities research and mentor racially-ethnically diverse trainees in their labs. Three investigators are Senior Investigators who have been champions in diversity and inclusion. Of the other 5, one is an Assistant Clinical Investigator, and the others are Tenure-Track Investigators (TTIs). This strategy of funding seasoned health disparities investigators and early career investigators has been exceptionally helpful in creating opportunities and supportive environments for trainees. Stefan Ambs, PhD NCI His group is pursuing molecular epidemiology and laboratory-based research of prostate and breast cancer with a focus on cancer health disparities and risk factors that alter tumor biology. His research team also uses translational and data science approaches to identify exposures and related pathways that promote tumor development and progression and impact patient survival. The team seeks to improve disease outcomes among African Americans by gaining an insight into their risk factors and tumor biology, or how risk factors impact tumor biology, and how this knowledge can be harnessed to improve cancer prevention and inform new strategies for clinical management and therapy development. Current research approaches include the assessment of the tumor transcriptome, epigenome, metabolome, proteome, and mutational signatures, using advanced technologies, and seek to integrate the neighborhood environment and social determinant of health as exposures. Fasil Tekola Ayele, PhD, NICHD Dr. Fasil Tekola Ayeles group has been focusing on genetic epidemiology of early growth and links with cardiometabolic diseases. Many cardiometabolic diseases in later life have links with early life growth. Advances in understanding the mechanism of early growth variation will provide early intervention opportunities for cardiometabolic outcomes. Dr. Tekola-Ayele's research aims to determine genetic mechanisms in early growth variations and links between early growth and cardiometabolic diseases/disparities in diverse ancestral populations. To achieve this goal, his group focuses on two overarching complementary research themes at the maternal-placental-fetal interface: genetics of fetal growth and placental epigenome/transcriptome. Michele Evans, MD, NIA Dr. Evans is a Senior Investigator at NIA with an ongoing cohort study of the role of race, SES and neighborhood on health and disease. Over the last fiscal year, post-doctoral fellow Dr. Natasha Pacheco was supported by NIMHD funding under the mentorship of Dr. Evans. She has worked on a follow-up study on frailty in the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span Study (HANDLS). Frailty is a clinical syndrome described as reduced physiological reserve and increased stress or vulnerability. Usually studied in older persons, recent work shows frailty occurs in middle-aged individuals and is associated with increased mortality. Identifying biologic pathways underlying frailty development in middle-aged adults is crucial to detect and prevent frailty as well as reduce premature mortality. Previous examination of global gene expression changes in HANDLS done by Dr. Calais Prince (also NIMHD supported fellow) demonstrated that activation of inflammatory genes and pathways was significantly altered by frailty status and race (Prince et al 2019). However, since there are also sex differences in frailty burden and mortality, Dr. Pacheco decided to investigate whether there were sex-specific transcriptome-wide differences in frailty-associated genes. In this study, we sought to identify novel genes and pathways associated with sex and frailty in a diverse middle-aged cohort using RNA-Sequencing. Her recently published work (Pacheco NL et al BMC Geriatrics. 2022;22(1):651) has found novel and significant differential gene expression by sex. Pravitt Gourh, PhD, NIAMS Genetic analysis of scleroderma (systemic sclerosis, SSc) patients from the Genome Research in African American Scleroderma Patients (GRASP) cohort identified HLA-DRB1*08:04, an African-ancestry predominant allele as the overall risk factor. On subset analysis of SSc, HLA-DRB1*08:04 remained the strongest risk factor with odds ratios ranging from 2.7 to 3.3-fold in the limited cutaneous systemic sclerosis (lcSSc), diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis (dcSSc), pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), and interstitial lung disease (ILD) subsets. For the first time, a protective effect of HLA-DRB4*01:01 was identified in both cohorts in the lcSSc subset and in the dcSSc subset of the African American (AA) cohort. There was a stronger effect seen in the lcSSc subset than the dcSSc subset. Chandra Jackson, PhD, NIEHS Social and Environmental Determinants of Health Equity Group has several accomplishments with projects titled as 1) Low perceptions of neighborhood connectedness and solidarity associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes among US adults, 2) Lack of access to sufficient, adequate food associated with poor sleep among US adults, 3) Relationships between reported financial hardship during COVID-19 and higher sleep disturbances were strongest among women and minoritized racial and ethnic groups, 4) Black women are disproportionately exposed to indoor light at night: Implications for sleep health disparities, 5) All countries on the planet need to promote sleep health, which has an important role in climate change adaptation, mitigation, and resiliency, 6) Structural racism is a fundamental cause of racial/ethnic disparities in sleep health and access to sleep health care Tiffany Powell Wiley, MD, NHLBI The Powell-Wiley laboratory has made progress on the groups three main research goals in targeting cardiovascular health disparities in high-risk, resource-limited communities. The lab's first goal is to delineate mechanisms by which neighborhood environment influences the development of cardiovascular disease. The second goal is to identify methods for incorporating digital health technology into interventions addressing behaviors associated with cardiovascular health in resource-limited neighborhood environments. The third goal is to identify and characterize physiologic pathways influenced by the chronic stress that comes from living in adverse neighborhood conditions, ultimately elucidating potentially novel pathways linked to cardiovascular risk phenotypes and most responsive to targeted health behavior interventions. Anne E. Sumner, MD, NIDDK Dr. Sumner's research advancing the field that the lipid and inflammatory profile of Africans is different depending on whether the etiology of their type 2 diabetes is due to beta-cell failure rather than insulin resistance. Additionally, Dr. Sumner's lab has been focusing on scoping review focused on developing first in Africa Diabetes Remission Protocols. Kyle Messier, PhD, NIEHS Dr. Kyle Messiers Spatiotemporal Health Analytics Group has two overarching themes: (1) geospatial exposure, disparity, and risk mapping; and (2) Spatiotemporal mapping connections to toxicology. Examples of on-going studies under theme 1 are: air pollution and gene expression relationships with skin autoimmune using the Personalized Environment and Gene Study (PEGS) cohort; and effects of flood risk, climate change, and social vulnerability on census tract-level cardiovascular outcomes. Examples of on-going studies under theme 2 are: geospatial modeling approach to quantifying the risk of exposure to environmental chemical mixtures via a common molecular initiating event; and toxicokinetic and toxicological-based geospatial risk mapping of gas-phase volatile organic compounds across the United States.