News and Announcements
Read the latest news from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s Department of Preventive Medicine. The links below take you to articles where you can learn more about our faculty’s latest achievements, awards and honors.
11.28.2023Preterm birth rates are an important marker in assessing a country’s overall health. And the United States isn’t fairing very well.
Individuals born in the U.S. had an overall higher rate (9.7 percent) of giving birth prematurely compared to U.S. immigrants (9 percent), a new Northwestern Medicine study published in JAMA Pediatrics has found.
11.17.2023For the first time in 10 years, the American Heart Association (AHA) has updated the model to predict someone’s risk of developing heart disease, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study published in the journal Circulation.
The update, called PREVENT (Predicting Risk of cardiovascular disease EVENTs), predicts someone’s risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) better and younger than before, and its race-free approach reflects the need to prioritize health equity when approaching prediction and prevention of CVD, said corresponding study author Sadiya Khan, MD, MSc, the Magerstadt Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology.
11.13.2023Nearly everyone can lower their blood pressure, even people currently on blood pressure-reducing drugs, by lowering their sodium intake, reports a new study published in JAMA from Northwestern Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
10.12.2023Pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia and gestational diabetes have recently been associated with a higher risk of developing heart disease later in life. But a new Northwestern Medicine study published in Circulation Research has found obesity before or during pregnancy is the actual root cause of future cardiovascular disease.
“We demonstrate, for the first time, that adverse pregnancy outcomes are primarily indicators — and not the root cause — of future heart health,” said corresponding author Sadiya Khan, ’09 MD, ’14 MSc, ’10, ’12 GME, the Magerstadt Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology in the Departments of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, and a Northwestern Medicine physician. “This means that pregnancy just reveals the risk for heart disease that is already there.”
09.27.2023Donald Lloyd-Jones, MD, ScM, the Eileen M. Foell Professor, has announced that he will be stepping down as chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the end of this academic year, after 15 years of distinguished leadership in the role. Since taking the helm in 2009, the department has grown tremendously, rising to the number one NIH-funded public health department of its kind, and internationally recognized as a premier destination for preventive medicine and population health.
09.22.2023A study led by Sadiya Khan, MD, MSc, the Magerstadt Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology in the Department of Medicine, found that Black residents living in highly segregated neighborhoods have significantly shortened life expectancies. Published in JAMA Health Forum, the study found that life expectancies of people in highly segregated areas are four years shorter on average compared to residents living in less segregated predominantly white neighborhoods.
09.22.2023Researchers with the Center for Advancing Safety of Machine Intelligence (CASMI) are studying expectant mothers’ stress levels to combat them in real time and even prevent them. Maia Jacobs, Northwestern assistant professor of computer science and preventive medicine, and Nabil Alshurafa, Northwestern associate professor of preventive medicine and of computer science and electrical and computer engineering, are principal investigators (PIs) of the CASMI-funded research project, “Co-Designing Patient-Facing Machine Learning for Prenatal Stress Reduction.”
09.07.2023Investigators have identified more than 60 previously unknown genetic variants associated with resting heart rate that may also contribute to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, according to findings published in Nature Communications.
08.30.2023Kristi Holmes, PhD, professor of Preventive Medicine, director of Northwestern’s Galter Health Sciences Library and chief of knowledge management for the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (I.AIM), has been named the new associate dean for knowledge management and strategy at Feinberg.
08.28.2023The Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study has received a 10-year $11 million grant renewal from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health.
08.08.2023Time-restricted eating without calorie counting was as effective as a calorie restriction diet for weight loss and cardiometabolic risk reduction in obese adults, according to findings published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
08.01.2023Mary McDermott, MD, ’92 GME, the Jeremiah Stamler Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine, has been awarded the American Heart Association 2023 Clinical Research Prize.
07.28.2023Black residents living in highly segregated neighborhoods have significantly shortened life expectancies, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study published in JAMA Health Forum.
- 07.25.2023Despite having risk factors for heart disease, only 60 percent of women reported receiving counseling on optimizing their heart health, which includes healthy eating, exercise and losing weight gained during pregnancy at their six-week postpartum visit between 2016 and 2020, a new Northwestern Medicine study published in JAMA has found.
07.19.2023Northwestern scientists have conducted a new study to see if living near green spaces, like parks and areas with a lot of plants, can affect how our bodies age and contribute to overall healthy aging.
07.18.2023Recent and long-term marijuana use is linked to changes in the human epigenome, a new Northwestern Medicine study published in Molecular Psychiatry has found.
07.11.2023Metformin, a drug commonly used to treat diabetes, may prevent the development of “long COVID,” according to a clinical trial published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
06.21.2023People genetically predisposed to have high LDL cholesterol are at an increased risk for coronary heart disease even if their cholesterol levels are only modestly elevated, according to a recent study published in Circulation.
06.07.2023Advanced biological aging may increase the risk of depression or anxiety in midlife for older adults, according to a recent study published in Nature Communications.
05.22.2023Salt substitutes may be effective in lowering blood pressure and reducing cardiovascular events in residents of elderly care facilities, according to a recent multi-center study published in Nature Medicine.
02.16.2023Combining intermittent fasting with exercise can help reduce the amount of fat around the liver for people with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, according to findings published in Cell Metabolism.
02.08.2023Mercedes Carnethon, PhD, the vice chair and Mary Harris Thompson Professor of Preventive Medicine and of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, has been awarded the Paula H. Stern Award for Outstanding Women in Science and Medicine by the Northwestern Medical Women Faculty Organization.
02.03.2023Consuming certain types of alcohol over long periods of time as well as binge drinking both speed up biological aging, according to a recent Northwestern Medicine study.
01.04.2023Increased levels of the antibody immunoglobulin A (IgA) are correlated with the manifestation of several diseases and African ancestry, according to findings published in Nature Communications.
12.15.2022Integrating social determinants of health helped mitigate bias when predicting long-term outcomes for heart failure patients, according to a Northwestern Medicine study.