Mentoring and Patient-Oriented Research on Social Exposures and CVD Risk in Underrepresented Women

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PROJECT SUMMARY This Mid-Career Investigator Award in Patient-Oriented Research is designed to provide Dr. Tené T. Lewis with protected time and other support to: 1) advance her current program of research, focused on understanding how social stressors contribute to cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in underrepresented and understudied groups of women; 2) accelerate a successful record of mentoring junior patient-oriented researchers across disciplines, with an emphasis on trainees historically underrepresented in research (e.g. racial/ethnic minority scientists); 3) enhance her mentoring skills, with a particular focus on transdisciplinary approaches and best-practices in providing mentoring and support to underrepresented groups; and 4) obtain training in the examination of biomarkers of ovarian aging, as emerging risk factors for CVD in women. Mentoring activities will leverage Dr. Lewis’ ongoing involvement in several training programs at Emory University, including an NHLBI-funded multidisciplinary T32 training grant on cardiovascular health inequities that she co-directs, the research-track Cardiology fellowship program at the School of Medicine, and the Master of Public Health and PhD programs in Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health. Mentoring training will occur via workshops and regular consultation with senior investigators with established track records in mentoring of patient-oriented researchers from a range of disciplinary and sociodemographic backgrounds. Training in ovarian aging will build upon Dr. Lewis’ existing collaborations at Emory and with the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN). Finally, the science proposed in the award will extend Dr. Lewis’ research in critically important new directions, by examining ovarian aging as a biologically plausible mechanism that might further contribute to our understanding of how social stressors impact subclinical CVD in vulnerable subgroups of women (particularly African-American women) highlighting processes occurring at midlife, when excess rates are most pronounced.