Heart disease is the most prevalent disease across the human race and is unfortunately one of the leading health disparities in the United States. In fact, it is the leading morbidity and mortality worldwide (Javed et al., 2022). Heart disease entails a broad range of conditions of the heart, including infarction, arrhythmia, ectopy, hypertrophy, high blood pressure, congenital heart disease, and more. The CDC reports that cardiovascular diseases alone are responsible for 17.9 million mortalities annually (Cardiovascular Diseases, 2023). Mortality is significantly higher across low income, underrepresented populations for whom access to heart healthy foods, environmentally safe living conditions, quality healthcare, and clean air can be difficult to come by. 

Unfortunately, the color of one’s skin determines risk for heart disease (Javed et al., 2022). For many, the risk factors for heart disease are silent. My own experience has shown me that living in a low income, poorly maintained neighborhood is linked to chronic medical conditions and these, in turn, are connected to why someone who looks like me is more susceptible to heart disease. The low income family living in a Section 8 neighborhood does not consider the environmental toxins they may be exposed to by the industrial warehouse a few blocks down or the toxins in the paint coating the walls of their home or the fact that the nearest grocery store with fresh produce is miles away. These factors pose risk for heart disease. The risk for mortality is even higher when the nearest medical center is miles away. The low income family rather sees their Section 8 housing as a safe place to call home – a place of security rather than a root in health disparities like heart disease. Along with dismantling a historical societal structure of racism and discrimination towards minority populations, it is imperative that science and the healthcare system push research forward to improve early diagnosis and effective treatment of heart disease in order to close the gap in morbidity and mortality from heart disease globally. 

During my summer with Stanford's Cardiovascular Institute, I attended various workshops by Stanford Medicine faculty to educate myself on the fundamentals of the biological structure of the heart and inequities across cardiovascular research. As part of Stanford MaVERICS, I had the pleasure of participating in a meta-research study on preclinical cardiovascular research within the last decade. I helped screened hundreds of preclinical cardiovascular publications for methodological rigor and inclusion. I learned that many preclinical cardiovascular studies are often done using mammals of the male sex, and studies using human participants often include cohorts of primarily white males– a non-representative model . This in itself is a cause for concern in our aim to improve cardiovascular care and close the disparity in heart disease. I am currently in the works of drafting a manuscript to report to the scientific community and the general public on preclinical cardiovascular study rigor. 

In addition to meta research, I also had the honor of participating in structural biology research in the Chiu Lab. I worked under the mentorship of Dr. Rahel Woldeyes to investigate cardiomyocyte sarcomere using cryo-electron tomography and machine learning. Using rat and human iPSC cardiomyocytes, I used a supervised deep learning algorithm to train a neural network to recognize and accurately label sarcomeric proteins within tomograms. This involved annotating various human and rat iPSC cardiomyocytes, and Bash & Python scripting, to provide the network information on the biological structure of cardiomyocytes and their intracellular components. We found that optimization of parameters and an increased number of manual annotations resulted in better labeling performance by convolutional neural networks. Using these approaches, we expect to discover structural differences between healthy and diseased cardiomyocytes, which can ultimately improve our understanding of the heart and improve patient care. 

Cardiovascular diseases. (2023). Retrieved April 2, 2023, from https://www.who.int/health-topics/cardiovascular-diseases

CVI. (2023). Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. Retrieved April 2, 2023, from https://med.stanford.edu/cvi.html

Javed, Z., Haisum Maqsood, M., Yahya, T., Amin, Z., Acquah, I., Valero-Elizondo, J., Andrieni, J., Dubey, P., Jackson, R. K., Daffin, M. A., Cainzos-Achirica, M., Hyder, A. A., & Nasir, K. (2022). Race, Racism, and Cardiovascular Health: Applying a Social Determinants of Health Framework to Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Cardiovascular Disease. Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, 15(1), e007917. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.121.007917

Tharp, C., Mestroni, L., & Taylor, M. (2020). Modifications of Titin Contribute to the Progression of Cardiomyopathy and Represent a Therapeutic Target for Treatment of Heart Failure. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 9(9), Article 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm9092770