# A Social Epigenomic Approach to Health Disparities in Cardiovascular Risk Factors

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR · 2021 · $676,744

## Abstract

A SOCIAL EPIGENOMIC APPROACH TO HEALTH DISPARITIES IN CARDIOVASCULAR RISK FACTORS
Individual-level socioeconomic factors such as education, income/wealth, and occupation have long been
known to profoundly affect risk for cardiovascular diseases, and these effects accumulate across the life
course to create systematic disadvantage that manifests in a wide range of health disparities. In addition, there
is now increasing evidence that neighborhood-level disadvantage also negatively impacts cardiovascular
health, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, even after accounting for individual-level socioeconomic
factors. One mechanism by which individual-level and neighborhood-level disadvantage may influence
cardiovascular health is through epigenomic modifications of genes regulating adaptive cellular pathways (e.g.
inflammation and immune response). To better understand the biological mechanisms underlying health
disparities in cardiovascular disease, we propose to investigate the impact of individual and neighborhood
disadvantage on the epigenome. We will conduct the discovery work in two epidemiologic studies – the Multi-
Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA, N=1,264) and the Genetic Epidemiology Network of Arteriopathy
(GENOA, N=1,728) – and replicate our results in other cohorts with similar measures, including the
Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study (ARIC, N=3,911) and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS,
N=2,000). This multi-cohort strategy increases scientific rigor by reducing false positives while improving our
higher-dimensional understanding of the social epigenomic architecture underlying cardiovascular disease. To
facilitate this multi-cohort approach, we will begin by harmonizing the measures of individual and neighborhood
disadvantage (Aim 1) to enable us to identify and replicate DNA methylation (DNAm) sites that are associated
with these measures of disadvantage (Aim 2) and then evaluate whether the DNAm sites are mediators of the
well-established relationships between disadvantage and cardiovascular risk factors (Aim 3). Finally, we will
perform pathway analysis to characterize the key biological pathways implicated by the DNAm sites identified
in the previous Aims, and investigate their association with gene expression in MESA and GENOA (Aim 4).

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10112291
- **Project number:** 5R01HL141292-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
- **Principal Investigator:** Jennifer Ann Smith
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $676,744
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-04-01 → 2023-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10112291

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10112291, A Social Epigenomic Approach to Health Disparities in Cardiovascular Risk Factors (5R01HL141292-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10112291. Licensed CC0.

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