IUPUI Epidemiology Professor Wins American Heart Association Award
Dr. Yiqing Song won the American Heart Association’s Award for Excellence in Research Addressing Cardiovascular Health Equity during the annual Epidemiology and Lifestyle 2017 Scientific sessions, March 7-10, in Portland, Oregon. This award recognizes his outstanding research work and poster presentation in the field of Cardiovascular Health Equity titled, “Racial Differences in Total, Free, and Bioavailable 25-hydroxyvitamin D and Parathyroid Hormone Levels and CVD Risk among Postmenopausal Women.
Understanding the sources of racial and ethnic differences in health outcomes is a prerequisite for designing effective preventive strategies to eliminate disparities. There is evidence that the vitamin D endocrine system acts synergistically with parathyroid hormone (PTH) to affect cardiovascular health. However, due to limited data, it remained uncertain whether and to what extent racial differences in circulating levels of vitamin D biomarkers explain racial disparities in CVD event rates. Dr. Song and his associates have conducted a prospective case-cohort study to assess racial and ethnic differences in the associations of a panel of physiologically important vitamin D-related biomarkers with CVD risk in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study (WHI-OS), one of the largest and most racially and ethnically diverse cohorts of postmenopausal women. This project was funded by the NIH/NHLBI R01 grant. Their preliminary results were presented in a moderated poster at the meeting. Their findings help resolve the uncertainty in the clinical usefulness of vitamin D biomarkers for CVD prediction and may direct population health efforts for CVD prevention in women of diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds.
Dr. Song received the honor on March 9 during the AHA Joint Council Dinner in Portland, Oregon.
Dr. Song is an associate professor of epidemiology and director of the PhD program in epidemiology at the IU Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Dr. Song has authored and co-authored more than 120 peer-reviewed research papers. Dr. Song has been serving as the principal investigator (PI) for two NIH R01 grants and as a key co-investigator for many other NIH-funded research grants. He has also served as ad hoc reviewer for a number of International and National Foundation/Society and federal funding agencies and over 30 peer-reviewed scientific journals.
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