Robert S. Gordon, Jr. Lecture in Epidemiology

2023 Awardee

Lisa A. Cooper
Lisa Angeline Cooper, M.D., M.P.H

Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Equity in Health and Healthcare
Professor of Medicine
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Lecture Title

Getting to the “Heart” of Cardiometabolic Health Disparities

View This Lecture
May 17, 2023

About the Lecture

Cardiometabolic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease, are exceedingly common and are collectively considered the leading causes of death worldwide. In this lecture, Dr. Lisa Angeline Cooper describes the current state of cardiometabolic health disparities among adults in the United States. She discusses how interventions to reduce cardiometabolic health disparities are designed, implemented, and evaluated, and how these interventions address contributors to disparities at multiple levels—from the behaviors of individuals and their family members; to health professionals and healthcare organizations; to communities and policy-making agencies. Drawing upon methods from epidemiology, health services research, clinical trials, social and behavioral science, community-based participatory research, and implementation science, she describes how she, her colleagues, and community partners have contributed to evidence regarding the actions of individual patients and healthcare professionals, healthcare systems, and community-based organizations that are most effective for advancing cardiometabolic health equity. Finally, she discusses how political, environmental, and social variables can either prevent or help to sustain and spread the uptake of evidence-based programs.

About Lisa Angeline Cooper

Dr. Lisa Angeline Cooper is the James F. Fries Professor of Medicine and a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is also the Founder and Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. Dr. Cooper studies how race and socioeconomic factors shape patient care, and how health systems, with communities, can improve the health of populations that experience health disparities. An internal medicine physician, epidemiologist, and health services researcher, Dr. Cooper and her team work in partnership with health systems and community-based organizations to identify interventions that alleviate health disparities and translate them into practice and policy changes that improve community health.

Dr. Cooper is a 2007 MacArthur Fellow and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. She is also a recipient of the Herbert W. Nickens Award for outstanding contributions to promoting social justice in medical education and equity in health care from the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Helen Rodriguez-Trias Social Justice Award from the American Public Health Association, and a Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Heart Association. Dr. Cooper is the author of the book, “Why Are Health Disparities Everyone’s Problem?” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021).  In September 2021, she was appointed by President Biden to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. 

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