Metabolic syndrome is a clustering of at least three of the following five medical conditions: abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides, and low serum high-density lipoprotein (HDL).
Hypertensive kidney disease is a medical condition referring to damage to the kidney due to chronic high blood pressure. It manifests as hypertensive nephrosclerosis. It should be distinguished from renovascular hypertension, which is a form of secondary hypertension, and thus has opposite direction of causation.
Sir Michael Gideon Marmot is Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. He is currently the Director of The UCL Institute of Health Equity. Marmot has led research groups on health inequalities for over thirty years, working for various international and governmental bodies. In 2023, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Race and health refers to how being identified with a specific race influences health. Race is a complex concept that has changed across chronological eras and depends on both self-identification and social recognition. In the study of race and health, scientists organize people in racial categories depending on different factors such as: phenotype, ancestry, social identity, genetic makeup and lived experience. "Race" and ethnicity often remain undifferentiated in health research.
Prediabetes is a component of the metabolic syndrome and is characterized by elevated blood sugar levels that fall below the threshold to diagnose diabetes mellitus. It usually does not cause symptoms but people with prediabetes often have obesity, dyslipidemia with high triglycerides and/or low HDL cholesterol, and hypertension. It is also associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Prediabetes is more accurately considered an early stage of diabetes as health complications associated with type 2 diabetes often occur before the diagnosis of diabetes.
Obesity is a risk factor for many chronic physical and mental illnesses.
This article provides a global overview of the current trends and distribution of metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome refers to a cluster of related risk factors for cardiovascular disease that includes abdominal obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and elevated cholesterol.
Franklin Marshall Matthews White is a Canadian public health scientist focused on capacity building for international and global education, research and development. He advocates:
"Public health...must not be left to the international community to define; it is...the responsibility of the countries themselves to define their priorities. The global agenda should be viewed as complementary at best."
"Health is mostly made in homes, communities and workplaces and only a minority of ill health can be repaired in clinics and hospitals."
"Nations (must) assess their public health human resource needs and develop their ability to deliver this capacity, and not depend on other countries to supply it."
“Public health and primary health care are the cornerstones of sustainable health systems, and this should be reflected in the health policies and professional education systems of all nations.”
Kaumudi Jinraj Joshipura is an Indian American Epidemiologist, Biostatistician, Dentist & Scientist. She is Adjunct Full Professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) at Harvard University and NIH Endowed Chair and Director of the Center for Clinical Research and Health Promotion and a Full Professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus. Her research work has been covered by global media including CNN, ABC, NBC, NHS, Newsweek, Nature, Telegraph, Japanese Journals and Japanese TV etc.
Daisy Fancourt is a British researcher who is an Associate Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology at University College London. Her research focuses on the effects of social factors on health, including loneliness, social isolation, community assets, arts and cultural engagement, and social prescribing. During the COVID-19 pandemic Fancourt led a team running the UK's largest study into the psychological and social impact of COVID-19 and established the international network COVID Minds, aiming to better understand the impact of coronavirus disease on mental health and well-being.
Anna Louise Hansell is a British physician who is Professor of Environmental Epidemiology and Director of the Centre for Environmental Health and Sustainability at the University of Leicester. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hansell studied the relationship between pollution and COVID-19.
Azeem Majeed is a Professor and Head of the Department of Primary Care & Public Health at Imperial College, London, as well as a general practitioner in South London and a consultant in public health. In the most recent UK University Research Excellence Framework results, Imperial College London was the highest ranked university in the UK for the quality of research in the “Public Health, Health Services and Primary Care” unit of assessment.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed race-based health care disparities in many countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Canada, and Singapore. These disparities are believed to originate from structural racism in these countries which pre-dates the pandemic; a commentary in The BMJ noted that "ethnoracialised differences in health outcomes have become the new normal across the world" as a result of ethnic and racial disparities in COVID-19 healthcare, determined by social factors. Data from the United States and elsewhere shows that minorities, especially black people, have been infected and killed at a disproportionate rate to white people.
Marcella Nunez-Smith is an American physician-scientist. She is C.N.H Long Professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine, where she serves as the inaugural Associate Dean for Health Equity Research and founding director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center. She also holds joint appointments at the Yale School of Public Health and the Yale School of Management. After co-chairing the Biden-Harris transition’s COVID-19 Advisory Board from November 2020 to January 2021, she was selected by President Joe Biden to serve as Senior Advisor to the White House COVID-19 Response Team and Chair of the Presidential COVID-19 Equity Task Force.
Cuilin Zhang is a Chinese-American epidemiologist and physician-scientist researching the roles of genetic and environmental factors in the pathogenesis of gestational diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and obesity and health consequences of these complications. Zhang is a senior investigator and acting chief of the epidemiology branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
The Strong Heart Study is an ongoing cohort study of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and its risk factors among American Indian men and women. The original cohort began in 1984 with 4,549 participants ages 35–74 from 13 tribal nations and communities in Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The need for specific ethnic and cultural understanding and sensitivities was recognized from the onset, so the study has a community-based participatory research (CBPR) model. Community members were involved in all stages of conception, design, and implementation of the research. Now in its seventh phase, the extensive research has led to many important findings about heart disease and unique risk factors in native populations. It is a project funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). The study maintains field centers in Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, and Arizona and a coordinating center at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unequal impact on different racial and ethnic groups in the United States, resulting in new disparities of health outcomes as well as exacerbating existing health and economic disparities.
Rodney Thornton Jackson is a New Zealand medically trained epidemiologist who has had lead roles in publicly funded research focussing on systems to effectively identify risk factors in the epidemiology of chronic diseases, in particular cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). This involved linking large cohort studies to regional and national electronic health databases and enabling the generation of new risk-prevention equations using web-based tools, such as the PREDICT model, to implement, monitor and improve risk assessment and management guidelines. Research on asthma in which Jackson participated influenced decisions made by the New Zealand Ministry of Health, and he has contributed to public debate on dietary risk factors for heart attacks and strokes. Following an evidence-based approach to identification of disparities in medical outcomes for different groups within the New Zealand population, Jackson took a position on racism in the medical sector. In 2020, he became a frequent commentator in the media on the approach of the New Zealand government to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 1999, Jackson has been professor of epidemiology at the University of Auckland.
Prof David Guwatudde is a Ugandan academic and researcher. He is currently a professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the School of Public Health, Makerere University College of Health Sciences.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the Hispanic/Latino population is becoming a topic of interest in AD research as Hispanics and Latinos are disproportionately affected by Alzheimer's Disease and underrepresented in clinical research. AD is a neurodegenerative disease, characterized by the presence of amyloid-beta plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, that causes memory loss and cognitive decline in its patients. However, pathology and symptoms have been shown to manifest differently in Hispanic/Latinos, as different neuroinflammatory markers are expressed and cognitive decline is more pronounced. Additionally, there is a large genetic component of AD, with mutations in the amyloid precursor protein (APP), Apolipoprotein E APOE), presenilin 1 (PSEN1), bridging Integrator 1 (BIN1), SORL1, and Clusterin (CLU) genes increasing one's risk to develop the condition. However, research has shown these high-risk genes have a different effect on Hispanics and Latinos then they do in other racial and ethnic groups. Additionally, this population experiences higher rates of comorbidities, that increase their risk of developing AD. Hispanics and Latinos also face socioeconomic and cultural factors, such as low income and a language barrier, that affect their ability to engage in clinical trials and receive proper care.
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