The Hispanic Community Health Study (also known as the SOL Study) is an epidemiological project to study health of Hispanic Americans in the U.S. Although Mexican Americans represent the vast majority of the more than 16,000 adults recruited for it, researchers also enrolled people of Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Central and South American descent. The project has been run out of four institutions: the University of Miami (Coral Gables, Florida), Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Bronx, New York), San Diego State University (San Diego, California), and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Since the study’s launch in 2006, researchers have collected data on baseline health markers such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels and diabetes diagnosis to study cardiovascular disease and cancer risk among participants. For epidemiologists studying health disparities among ethnic and racial groups, the study has been a boon, in part because it has allowed them to study quality of health differences among Hispanic American groups.
Findings from one study that looked at diabetes rates, for instance, showed that Mexican American, Puerto Rican and Dominican adults were more likely than South American adults to have diabetes. According to results from one study, Cuban adults were less likely to be obese compared with their Mexican American and Puerto Rican peers.
HCHS/SOL is sponsored by several institutes, centers and departments affiliated with the National Institutes of Health, including the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).