Health Disparities Research Section

Michele K Evans , MD
Chief, Health Disparities Research Section
Laboratory of Epidemiology and Population Sciences

Nicole Noren Hooten , Ph.D. Staff Scientist

Ngozi Ezike , M.D., Staff Clinician HANDLS

May Baydoun , Ph.D., Staff Scientist

Jennifer H. Norbeck , MSW., CCRC Clinical Study Manager

The Health Disparities Research Section (HDRS) conducts interdisciplinary clinical and basic science research examining the biologic transduction pathways through which the social determinants of health contribute to the disproportionate incidence, morbidity, and mortality of age-related disease among minority and low socioeconomic status (SES) Americans. The approach provides a two-way bridge between basic science laboratory studies and clinical and behavioral research that spans from a targeted epidemiologic population to the bench. Dissecting the interaction of race, socioeconomic status, behavior, environmental exposure, genetics, and social environment provides insight into how these interactions may result in disparate rates of age-related disease and disability. We have accomplished this by establishing a clinical component, the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span Study (HANDLS) https://handls.nih.gov/ and a basic science laboratory component, the DNA Repair Unit, that are interdependent and pursuing related hypotheses. The HANDLS study investigates whether race and SES influence health status and age-related health disparities separately or synergistically as co-factors of behavioral, psychosocial, and environmental conditions. HANDLS is a community -based, epidemiologic, interdisciplinary, longitudinal study. Our baseline cohort recruited between 2004-2009 was representative of working-age African Americans and Whites between 30–64 years old recruited as a fixed cohort of participants by household screenings from an area probability sample of thirteen neighborhoods (contiguous census tracts) in Baltimore City beginning. The research domains include: cognitive function, nutrition, neighborhood environment, anthropometry, cardiovascular health, physical performance, molecular markers, genetics and genomics, nephrology, neuroimaging, vision, and psychology.