Mentorship in patient-oriented research on behavioral and social determinants of cardiometabolic health

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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.