The Jackson Heart Study is a longitudinal project to study heart and stroke risk among Black adults; it has been called by some researchers the Framingham of Black Americans. Launched in 1998, the study is a collaboration of four entities: Jackson State University, Tougaloo College, the Mississippi State Department of Health and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. More than 5,000 adults ages 35-84 were recruited for the project, and a separate cohort was selected to study the health of relatives of participants. By 2017, about a fifth of the participants had died. For more than 20 years now, researchers and physicians have been collecting baseline health data such as blood pressure, cholesterol level and diabetes diagnosis. And investigators have collected information on income level, educational attainment, health care access and other social determinants of health. Participants are also sharing their experiences with racism to enable researchers to study the effects of racism on overall health. The Jackson Heart Study receives funding from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD).
