# Psychosocial Stress due to COVID-19 and Vascular Aging in African-American Women

> **NIH NIH R01** · EMORY UNIVERSITY · 2023 · $777,435

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic is arguably one of the most devastating
Public Health crises of the last century. In the United States, African-Americans have been disproportionately
impacted, with overall rates of infection and mortality 2 to 4 times higher than those observed in Whites.
Additionally, as a direct result of closings of non-essential businesses and other entities, rates of
unemployment and underemployment have also surged, and African-Americans are significantly more likely
than Whites to report being underemployed or furloughed due to the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, given racial
disparities in COVID-19 mortality, national polls have also found racial differences in reports of COVID-related
loss, with African-Americans more frequently reporting personally knowing someone who has died from
COVID-19 than Whites. Because of this, it has been argued that, as a result of COVID-19, African-
Americans are experiencing a “pandemic of stress” that will have a “dangerous impact” on their health
and well-being long after the virus itself has been contained. Leveraging our previously funded cohort that
assessed psychosocial stress and vascular aging in early middle-aged African-American women, we have an
unprecedented opportunity to examine the degree to which stressors resulting from, and related to,
the COVID-19 pandemic might impact vascular disease—the number 1 killer in the US-in this group.
Middle-aged African-American women may be a uniquely important group on which to focus, because: 1) they
have increasingly high, but poorly understood, rates of vascular disease relative to other race-gender groups;
and 2) the long-term impact of the widespread financial, employment and social stressors resulting from
COVID-19 might be particularly deleterious for African-American women, largely due to structural and
contextual inequalities that pre-dated the pandemic itself. The proposed project will examine linkages between
overall psychosocial stressors (debt, financial stress, job stress, interpersonal incivilities and mistreatment,
loneliness), COVID-specific stressors (COVID-related financial difficulties, COVID-specific parenting stressors,
COVID-related loss) and prospective changes in vascular aging (ambulatory blood pressure, arterial stiffness,
inflammation) over 24 months in a cohort of 350 middle-aged African-American women. Because we have
pre-COVID assessments of a range of psychosocial stressors, a major innovation of the proposed work is
our ability to examine how pre- versus post-COVID changes in exposure to overall psychosocial stress
might prospectively impact vascular aging. Importantly, we will capitalize on the considerable within-group
heterogeneity in our cohort, to examine whether any of our hypothesized associations are moderated by pre-
COVID assessed sociodemographic factors that might increase vulnerability (socioeconomic status, single
parenthood, marital status) or resilience...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10604282
- **Project number:** 5R01HL158141-03
- **Recipient organization:** EMORY UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Tené T Lewis
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $777,435
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-05-01 → 2025-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10604282

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10604282, Psychosocial Stress due to COVID-19 and Vascular Aging in African-American Women (5R01HL158141-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10604282. Licensed CC0.

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