Jay Lusk
Student

I am a dual-degree MD/MBA student who intends to pursue a career in neurology as a clinician-scientist. I am a Margolis Scholar in Medicine, and my interests include the population health of cardiovascular disease and stroke, health policy and health systems transformation, and physician leadership of health systems. I am passionate about structural reform to improve health equity and am deeply interested in applying innovative, multidisciplinary approaches to decrease population-level morbidity and mortality from common chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease, stroke, and dementia. I am also deeply interested in leveraging tools from health economics and population health to impact health policy, and have a particular academic focus in applying structural equation modeling (SEM) to clinical and public health problems. I am involved in a broad range of high-level service to the University, and aspire to become a physician-leader in an academic medical system. 

Current Research Interests

I currently am engaged in a variety of research pursuits. My primary projects are as follows:

1) I designed and am leading a project investigating the connection between psychosocial stressors, healthcare utilization, health behaviors, and cardiovascular health outcomes of patients in the Jackson Heart Study through an innovative structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. I will also be leading a project applying SEM to the population level to characterize unique features of and disparities in cardiovascular disease progression over time for various incident cardiovascular disease states. 

2) I am leading several analyses of the Healthcare Worker Exposure Response and Outcomes (HERO) registry, to investigate factors associated with COVID-19 outcomes for healthcare workers. Specifically, I led an analysis of racial/ethnic disparities in healthcare worker experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, and am performing an analysis of the association between healthcare facility characteristics and outcomes for healthcare workers. 

3) I am leading several analyses of geographic, racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in medicare/medicaid beneficiaries with dementia in North and South Carolina. 

4) I am engaged in several related projects that evaluate the association between neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation and outcomes for a variety of diseases, and consider the health policy and population health impacts of area socioeconomic inequality. 

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Contact Information

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