The Jackson Heart Study (JHS), the largest investigation of CVD undertaken in an African-American population, is a single-site prospective epidemiologic investigation in the Jackson, Mississippi metropolitan area of Hinds, Madison, and Rankin counties. The JHS is sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The JHS started as a partnership between three local institutions: Jackson State University, Tougaloo College, and the University of Mississippi Medical Center and recruited 5,306 African-American men and women between the ages of 35 and 84. Family members were included in order to permit studies of familial and genetic contributions to CVD. The initial examination phase of the study lasted from the fall of 2000 to March 2004 and involved an extensive examination that included a series of questionnaires (dealing with lifestyle habits, medical history, medications, social and cultural factors), physical assessments (height, weight, body size, blood pressure, electrocardiogram, ultrasound measurements of the heart and arteries in the neck, and lung function) and laboratory measurements (cholesterol and other lipids, glucose, indicators related to clotting of the blood, among others). The information collected in this study includes both conventional risk factors and new or emerging factors that may be related to CVD. It also included newer areas of focus comprising early indicators of disease, genetics, socio-cultural influences, such as socioeconomic status and discrimination, and physiological relations between common disorders such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes and their influence on CVD. Exam 2 was conducted between 2005 and 2008, and Exam 3 from 2009 to 2012. The next phase of the JHS extended from 2013-2018 and did not include a clinic exam.