Statistical methods to understand changes in dietary patterns over time and cardiovascular disease risk among understudied populations

PROJECT SUMMARY My goal is to establish myself as an independent researcher on cardiovascular disease (CVD) disparities with expertise in Bayesian nonparametric clustering techniques and nutrition epidemiology. Attaining these objectives will require focused didactic training and research guidance. My research goals are to develop new methodology to identify temporal dietary patterns that are related to CVD risk of understudied and marginalized subgroups. These new methods will identify dietary exposure differences that occur across populations in the United States over time that otherwise may be overlooked. I will also develop methods to assess how these temporal dietary exposure patterns impact CVD risk outcomes for adult women. With access to two NIH- funded female cohort studies—the Black Women’s Health Study and the Nurses’ Health Study II —I will apply the proposed methods to examine multivariate dietary exposure changes of US women over time and their association with CVD health disparities, highlighting differences defined by racial/ethnic subpopulations. Through implementation of the proposed methods and application to two large population-based cohorts, this research will characterize the dietary behaviors of subgroups at greatest risk of CVD disparities and inform future policies to improve dietary recommendations and promote population health equity. To achieve my training goals, the proposed training plan consists of four elements: (1) a didactic component to expand my expertise in nutrition and CVD epidemiology and disparities; (2) career guidance in methodological development in repeated measures analysis of nutritional data of large, diverse populations; (3) innovative research using gained content expertise in nutrition and CVD epidemiology and previous statistical training; and (4) exchange of ideas in biostatistics, nutrition epidemiology, and CVD disparities through attendance at conferences, seminars, and workshops. Planned training activities will enhance my understanding of dietary consumption behaviors, CVD epidemiology, and disparities enabling me to develop useful models to measure multivariate dietary exposure patterns over time and CVD risk estimation for vulnerable populations. The skills and experience developed during this award period will prepare me to lead an interdisciplinary research program addressing factors associated with cardiometabolic health disparities.