This proposal is a competitive renewal application for an Institutional National Research Service Award training grant that will continue a focus for training in the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular diseases at the University of Washington. We propose to continue to use the following training strategy: combine training through existing graduate degree programs in Epidemiology at an outstanding School of Public Health and Community Medicine with interdisciplinary research experiences in the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular disease. The Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington, will provide the formal coursework and degree programs; and, the Cardiovascular Health Research Unit, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington will provide the research experience. The teaching and research activities of the faculty at the University of Washington who are active in cardiovascular research have expanded over the past four years and provide a variety of opportunities for formal training and research experiences related to the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular diseases including: cardiovascular epidemiology, genetic epidemiology, molecular/biochemical epidemiology, nutritional epidemiology, pharmacoepidemiology, infectious disease epidemiology, neuro-epidemiology, environmental epidemiology, and preventive cardiology health services. The program will involve both pre-doctoral students (6 slots per year) who seek the Ph.D. in Epidemiology and post-doctoral students, physicians and other health professionals (2 slots per year), who seek the M.S. or M.P.H. degree in Epidemiology. The mix of trainees models the collaborative research teams that we have found enhance research productivity. The University of Washington Cardiovascular Epidemiology Training Program was initially funded by NHLBI in 1998. The program has attracted outstanding students to careers in cardiovascular epidemiology and prevention. While only a two trainees have completed the program to date, each has continued on to faculty positions in Schools of Medicine and Public Health and have made important contributions to the field of cardiovascular epidemiology. Currently, there are 2 post-doctoral and 5 pre-doctoral trainees in the Program. In short, the program has begun to achieve its goal of increasing the numbers of professionals, both Ph.D. cardiovascular epidemiologists and physician-epidemiologists, with the knowledge and skills to develop, implement, evaluate, translate, and disseminate research in the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular diseases.
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