The Division's research has had a longstanding focus on understanding health disparities across the continuum of care. The Division's portfolio includes work that identifies groups at risk for health disparities and studies that try to understand the mechanisms that underlie these disparities. This work has focused on underserved groups such as racial and ethnic minorities, immigrant populations, persons who are obese or disabled, and the socio-economically disadvantaged.
Dr. Stephen Juraschek has examined the role of healthcare disparities in access to healthy diets and control of hypertension. He currently directs a trial funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to provide healthy food to African-Americans with hypertension living in Boston food deserts.
Dr. Ruth-Alma Turkson-Ocran's research interests are centered around health disparities, social determinants of health, community-engaged research, and cardiometabolic health, particularly among persons of African descent. She also has experience in immigrant health and has examined nativity differences in cardiovascular disease risk factors and biopsychosocial health determinants including stress, discrimination, depression, social support, and resilience. Her research portfolio includes examining data from large nationally representative sources, wearable devices including actigraphy and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM). Dr. Turkson-Ocran's current research is centered around hypertension prevention, food insecurity, and nutrition-related behaviors and their associated comorbidities and complications. She is involved in projects examining racial differences in blood pressure patterns from office, ambulatory, and home blood pressure measurements and their associated health outcomes.
Dr. Mingyu Zhang studies how social and structural determinants contribute to the racial and ethnic disparities in environmental pollutant exposures and cardiometabolic disease risk across the life course. He has collaborated with some of the most diverse cohorts in the United States, including the Boston Birth Cohort, Nurture, and cohorts within the NIH Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Consortium. Dr. Zhang's research sheds light on the effects of air pollutants, toxic heavy metals, and PFAS on the cardiometabolic health of pregnant individuals and their children, particularly within Black and Hispanic communities who face a disproportionate burden of such pollutants but have historically been underrepresented or excluded from research. Currently, Dr. Zhang is a co-investigator of the ongoing ECHO Boston cohort, and he examines how factors such as food insecurity, diet quality, and environmental pollutants contribute to inequities in pregnancy conditions that can lead to later obesity and cardiovascular disease risk.
Dr. Ken Mukamal has collaborated with Dr. John Danziger to study racial and ethnic disparities in critical and nephrology care and, most recently, in toxicity from lead contamination of drinking water nationwide. Their work has shown that even permissible levels of lead contamination by EPA standards are associated with hematological toxicity in vulnerable populations like children and patients with chronic kidney disease.