The Inaugural Elijah B. Saunders Memorial Lecture

This inaugural memorial lecture provides an opportunity to celebrate the life of Elijah B. Saunders, MD, FACC and pays tribute to his pioneering spirit in the quest to advance health equity in the prevention and control of hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. It also enables an assessment of the state of the global burden of hypertension and related disparities. Despite the remarkable biomedical research progress made over the last half-century, hypertension remains the leading risk factor for global disease burden and the major preventable contributor to cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. Additionally, disparities in hypertension-related morbidity and mortality remain pervasive worldwide. National hypertension control rates showing progress often mask important suboptimal treatment and control in population groups defined by sex, race, ethnicity, geography, and social and environmental determinants. Within these groups, many hypertension-related disparities remain largely unchanged while other gaps have widened. In essence, current research has been relatively ineffective in guiding large-scale, sustained elimination of hypertension-related disparities. An important explanation for these observations may be the significant advances made in observational epidemiological research, especially in improved surveillance and data collection that document the extent of disparities in marked contrast to the relative paucity of interventional disparities research. The paucity of these interventional research studies remains a continuing challenge. The time has come for renewed efforts in building strategic partnerships that leverage transdisciplinary, multi-sectoral expertise to provide global leadership in interventional implementation research for hypertension control and elimination of related disparities. Developing an appropriately skilled implementation research workforce will be crucial. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and its biomedical research funding partners remain committed to a strategic agenda of implementation research, training, and education for the prevention and control of hypertension and elimination of related disparities

Environmental health · Ethnic group · Health equity · Observational study · Pathology · Political science · Population · Public health · Workforce · Blood Pressure and Hypertension Studies · Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology · Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life · Law · Medicine · Epidemiology · Gerontology · Internal Medicine

• Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics—2016 Update

  Dariush Mozaffarian, Emelia J Benjamin et al.•Circulation•2016

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• Prevalence of Major Cardiovascular Risk Factors and Cardiovascular Diseases Among Hispanic/Latino Individuals of Diverse Backgrounds in the United States

  Martha L Daviglus, Martha Daviglus et al.•JAMA•2012

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• Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks in 188 countries, 1990–2013

  Open Access•Mohammad H Forouzanfar, Lily Alexander et al.•The Lancet•2015

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• Global burden of hypertension

  Open Access•Patricia M Kearney, Megan Whelton et al.•The Lancet•2005

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• Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015

  Open Access•Mohammad H Forouzanfar, Ashkan Afshin et al.•The Lancet•2016

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• A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010

  Open Access•Stephen S Lim, Theo Vos et al.•The Lancet•2012

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• Advancing Health Disparities Research Within the Health Care System

  Amy M Kilbourne, Galen E Switzer et al.•American Journal of Public Health•2006

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