About the Center

History

The UMass Lowell Center for Population Health (UML-CPH) is the next phase of an established group of researchers and community partners who made up the Boston Puerto Rican Center for Population Health and Health Disparities (BPR-CPHHD, 2003-2017).

The BPR-CPHHD was one of ten centers funded by the NIH and focused on the role of stress on physical disability and cognitive decline through physiological dysregulation or “allostatic load.” During that investigation, it became clear that risk factors for CVD were highly prevalent. These findings are in contrast to the commonly held belief that there is a Hispanic paradox - lower heart disease and mortality despite greater poverty.

Vision

We have evolved over the years, setting our sights on a broader goal in population health. As the UML-CPH, our vision is to establish long-term interventions in diverse populations, that effectively reduce the prevalence of diseases and improve overall quality of health and well-being. Today, the Center is made up of researchers in nutrition, bone and cognitive health, cardiometabolic risk, social and environmental determinants of health and nutrigenomics, working with a diverse set of community partners.

We seek to understand the complex relationships of diet and other behavioral and environmental factors, genetics and psychosocial stress. We are especially interested in understanding these relationships with the high and apparently increasing prevalence of cardiometabolic risk factors in adults, particularly in underserved communities.

Each population differs considerably in ancestral genetic history and in exposures to known risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases. They have unique dietary intake patterns, as well as social, cultural, and environmental structures that contribute to stressors.