Strogatz is an epidemiologist whose research focuses primarily on health disparities in cardiovascular disease—specifically, racial and ethnic differences in the etiology, prevention and management of disease. He has engaged in multiple collaborative studies of the relationship between the occupational structure of counties and mortality from coronary heart disease. The papers on this topic, which also address the interrelationships of occupational structure with community services and with race and social class as predictors of heart disease mortality, have been published in the American Journal of Public Health and Social Science and Medicine, among other places. Dr. Strogatz’s recent research projects also include the study of risk factors for high blood pressure and diabetes in African-American adult resident of Pitt County, North Carolina. In addition, he has collaborated with colleagues from Albany Medical College on clinical studies of endothelial function in coronary microcirculation; a paper in Hypertension describes differences between blacks and whites in this respect that may contribute to racial differences in heart-disease mortality.
During this period, Strogatz also contributed to the work of important committees and boards, most notably, the Institute of Medicine’s Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s Observational Study Monitoring Board for the CARDIA Study. With CSDA Director Alba, he recently completed a report on health disparities in diabetes in upstate New York cities.
Strogatz is engaged in two important efforts that involve a number of other CSDA associates. He is the Director of the Prevention Research Center at the School of Public Health, which is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and focuses on community-based interventions to prevent chronic diseases, especially diabetes and cardiovascular disease. With Alba, he is also the Co-Director of the Research Core of the EXPORT Center. Recently, he has also served as a Co-PI on a grant from the American Heart Association to examine clinical predictors of racial disparities in cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.
As part of their work for the EXPORT Center for the Elimination of Health Disparities, Strogatz and Alba are planning the development of a data base on health disparities in the communities of upstate New York; this data base will draw upon the data resources of the New York Health Department, such as the SPARCS data base, which contains records for all hospital discharges in the state, in order to construct place-specific estimates of disease occurrence (based on hospitalization) for racial groups and Hispanics. In addition, the Prevention Research Center has been approved for a new cycle of funding (through September, 2009), and so the collaborative work with communities in three counties of New York’s Capital Region will continue. The on-going research projects at the center involve ecological aspects of the prevention related to physical activity, diet and management of chronic diseases.
Strogatz is a critical bridge between the public-health and population-research worlds in Albany. Through both the Prevention and the EXPORT Centers, Strogatz provides contexts for faculty from the public-health and social-science disciplines to collaborate within the university and with community-based organizations for the development and evaluation of strategies to reduce chronic diseases within the population.
Strogatz has used CSDA Administrative Core for developing the administrative sections of grant proposals and for assisting with the administration of funded projects. The EXPORT Center Research Core, which Strogatz co-directs, is entirely administered by CSDA. The Prevention Research Center, which he directs, also receives significant assistance from CSDA staff, namely, Dr. Ruby Wang, who advises on the management and analysis of data.