Phillip Levy
Wayne State University, MI·Public Health & Epidemiology
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the Detroit and Cleveland region. It hits largely Black communities hardest, contributing to a gap in lifespan between Black and White residents.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
cardiometabolic health
cardiovascular disease
heart disease
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Control cardiometabolic risk factors, especially high blood pressure, in largely Black Detroit and Cleveland census tracts using community health workers and pharmacists who help manage multiple chronic diseases.
- Compare early-prevention approaches delivered through mobile health units with those delivered at fixed community locations across four related projects.
- Build a distributed cloud-based database with informatics tools that combines public and investigator-collected data to profile multi-level cardiometabolic risk factors in each city.
- Run a pilot grants program and train early-career investigators focused on reducing cardiovascular disease disparities in Black populations.
More about the research
Much of this burden comes from cardiometabolic risk factors such as high blood pressure, which can be treated if caught early. Uncontrolled high blood pressure is the most important modifiable contributor to heart disease. This work asks whether bringing prevention directly into high-risk neighborhoods can control these risk factors early and narrow the gap in deaths before about age 70.
Why it matters
Black residents of Detroit and Cleveland carry a heavy burden of high blood pressure and related heart and metabolic disease, which shortens lives. Neighborhood-level programs using community health workers, pharmacists, and mobile health units could offer a cost-effective, scalable model for controlling these conditions early. Such a model could help health systems and cities reduce Black-White differences in lifespan.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Hoda Abdel Magid
University of Southern California, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Estimate how socioeconomic spatial social polarization (race, income, education, segregation) relates to hypertension prevalence, new cases, treatment and control among Black and White adults in the CHS and REGARDS cohorts.
Devin Mann
New York University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Develop community health worker training modules for remote blood pressure monitoring, plus electronic health record support tools, using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research and user-centered design.
Richard MacLehose
Tulane University of Louisiana, LA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Measure brain structure, brain function, cognition and blood-based markers related to Alzheimer's disease in adults aged 40–55 from the Bogalusa, NGHS and Princeton lipid cohorts.
The school
Wayne State University: 21 labs on PI Pages, $292M a year on research, 194 research doctorates a year.
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