Center for African American Urban Health

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The Wayne State University (WSU) Center for African American Urban Health is a 5-year proposal that consists of five Cores and four Projects with participation of 34 investigators from various Departments, Centers, and Programs across the WSU campus. The Center has invested heavily in coalescing and expanding a shared research infrastructure that is widely accessible to investigators. The four Cores represent specialized areas of expertise and services required to undertake testing of multi-level hypotheses related to research in racial health disparities. These Cores form the foundation of our application. The Cores are: 1) Psychosocial and Community Measures; 2) Recruitment and Clinical Assessment; 3) Biostatistics and Research Database; and 4) Genomics Core. These Cores allow the investigators to test a broader range of Project-specific study hypotheses in a more cost-efficient manner than would be possible with stand-alone Projects. African Americans were selected as the exclusive study population for the Center because of their high burden of obesity-related disease such as breast cancer and cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, heart failure, diabetes mellitus, and coronary heart disease). Also, while Detroit has the third largest population of African Americans, it has the highest percentage (81.6%) of African Americans of any major city in the USA. The four Projects are: 1) Project 1: Obesity, Nitric Oxide, Oxidative Stress and Salt Sensitivity, 2) Project 2: Weight Loss in Breast Cancer Survivors, 3) Project 3: A Dyadic Intervention for Cardiac Rehabilitation Patients, and 4) Project 4: Promotion of Healthy Behavior in African American Women. These Projects are thematically linked through obesity, diet and other lifestyle factors including physical activity, and obesity-related cardiovascular disease and cancer. Our research efforts are focused on understanding the mechanisms operating at multiple levels (environment, lifestyle, physiology, genetics) mediating known disparate chronic conditions and their precursors. We also seek to identify preventive strategies and therapeutic approaches that might alleviate the disproportionate burden of disease. Primary as well as interactive effects of environmental exposures (household and community-level) and psychobehavioral characteristics with physiological measures (e.g., 24-hour BP burden and oxidative stress), genes, and body composition will be explored in relation to their impact on study outcomes.