Cardiovascular disease prevention and intervention strategies for African-American men on tap at upcoming conference

CHAAMPS exists to develop, implement and evaluate interventions to improve African-American men’s health through research, outreach and training.

herman taylorHerman Taylor, M.D., professor of medicine and director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Morehouse School of MedicineThe Center for Healthy African American Men through Partnerships, or CHAAMPS, will host a forum Monday, Oct. 30, to share successful strategies in cardiovascular disease prevention and intervention for African-American men.

Herman Taylor, M.D., professor of medicine and director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine, will provide the keynote address. Taylor oversees a diverse portfolio of cardiovascular research with interdisciplinary teams spanning many departments, institutions and funding agencies. He is a graduate of Princeton University, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Prior to his position with the Morehouse School of Medicine, Taylor was the director and principal investigator of the National Institutes of HealthealthH’s landmark study of African-American heart health and disease known as the Jackson Heart Study, which is the largest epidemiological study of cardiovascular health among African-Americans and produced the world’s foremost repository of data on African-American heart health.

The Center for Healthy African American Men through Partnerships — a consortium of academic centers and community organizations — is a collaborative center working to develop, implement and evaluate interventions to improve African-American men’s health through research, outreach and training. 

The effort is led by the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Minnesota, with multidisciplinary teams of investigators and national experts in diverse fields. Community partners include the National Football League, 100 Black Men of America, Inc., and the National USA Foundation. These relationships are essential in developing collaborative strategies to change the current health trajectory of African-American men. 

Other panelists participating in the open forum include LeShawndra Price, Ph.D., chief of the Health Inequities and Global Health Branch Center for Translation Research and Implementation Science at the National Heart Lung Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health; Mercedes Carnethon, Ph.D., associate director and vice chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine and director of the Division of Epidemiology in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University; Adam Vaughan, Ph.D., spatial epidemiologist in the Division of Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Julian Booker, M.D., associate professor, Department of Medicine, director of Echocardiography in the Division of Cardiovascular Disease at UAB.

The CHAAMPS panel discussion is open to the public. It will be held Monday, Oct. 30, beginning at 1 p.m. at the Doubletree Hotel in Birmingham. Prior to the panel discussion, participants are invited to attend the CHAAMPS poster session, which begins at 10:30 am. Lunch will be provided at noon.