Study of cardiovascular disease, its contributing factorsANN ARBOR—A group of researchers led by Amy Schulz of the University of Michigan hopes to find the links between cardiovascular disease and a variety of factors, including socioeconomic status, physical environment and social stressors.

The five-year Health Environments Partnership study will take place in Detroit as part of the efforts of Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center, known as Detroit URC (www.sph.umich.edu/urc).

Schulz, assistant research scientist in the U-M Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, points out that while much research has taken place about cardiovascular disease, a number of elements make the HEP project unique.

For one, community members are involved in every aspect, including the planning, conceptualization and implementation of the study, including dissemination of the study results in the community.

In addition, because the Detroit URC is a collaborative partnership between the U-M School of Public Health and community-based health organizations, the focus is not just on collecting data but on using the information collaboratively to create new ways to address the health needs of Detroit residents. A full two years of the five-year project is likely to focus on designing interventions, Schulz said.

Research is set to include a variety of determinants of health, focusing on the presence of airborne pollutants but also including such things as concentration of poverty or affluence in neighborhoods, and social cohesion.

Schulz said she is looking for interrelationships among the factors—for example, perhaps pollutants boost the likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease, and that risk is amplified in people coping with psychological stressors or reduced in people with a strong social support system. These are known as conditioning variables, factors that are likely to either make better or worse the effects of your environment.

Though the research will focus on Detroit, Schulz said it is likely the findings will have implications for other urban environments and beyond.

When designing ways to make use of the data to address the health of city residents, Schulz said the project will employ an ecological model, which views individuals within the framework of families and neighborhoods and communities. Thus, interventions will work toward community and policy changes as well as with individual residents.

Srimathi Kannan, co-principal investigator on the project, said the goal is to work with the community to identify both risk and protective factors that might affect residents’ health and to empower community members to address their cardiovascular health needs. Kannan is an assistant professor of nutrition in the U-M Department of Environmental Health Sciences.

The $3 million project is funded by the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health. In addition to the U-M School of Public Health, organizations participating are Butzel Family Center, Detroit Health Department, Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision, Brightmoor Community Center, Friends of Parkside and Henry Ford Health System.

The Detroit URC promotes and supports interdisciplinary, collaborative, community-based participatory research that both improves the health and quality of life of families and communities on the east and southwest sides of Detroit, and contributes to the understanding of the relationship between social determinants, protective factors, intermediate outcomes, and long-term health outcomes specific to inner-city, urban environments.

Amy SchulzDetroit URCDepartment of Health Behavior and Health EducationSchool of Public HealthSrimathi KannanNational Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences