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SocialPaths Sex-specific social pathways to cardiovascular disease risk across the life course

Safe People

Organisation name

University College Cork

Organisation sector

Academic Institute

Applicant name(s)

Kate O'NeillDr Linda O'Keeffe

Safe Projects

Project ID

B3846

Lay summary

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death around the world and will continue to be so for the rest of the 21st century. After several decades of research, we know what causes heart disease but it remains a challenge globally to prevent it and much research is still required to inform new prevention strategies into the future. These prevention strategies require research that takes a different approach to the study of heart disease. In the past, much research on heart disease has focused on males and often ignored important differences between the sexes. This means that much of what we know about heart disease and how we go about preventing it today is based on research in males. As a result research which studies males and females separately and the differences between them is required.

Public benefit statement

SocialPaths will address three critical knowledge gaps which cross-cut limitations in understanding in the sex-specific aetiology of CVD and the role of social risk factors in CVD aetiology across the life course. Specifically, SocialPaths will focus on producing new knowledge with greater potential for translation to reduction of social inequalities in health using: •Life course approaches which can inform timing of intervention for social inequalities which takes account of the unique sex-specific aetiology of CVD across the life course; •Causal mediation methods which can be used for sex-specific investigation of modifiable pathways linking social risk factors and CVD risk and testing of hypothetical real world interventions for social inequalities in CVD risk across the life course.

Latest approval date

26/08/2021