Heart disease is rampant in parts of the rural South. Researchers are hitting the road to learn why
Public health experts from some of the nation’s leading research universities have deployed a massive medical trailer to rural parts of the South as part of an ambitious and unusual new health study
Darrell Dixon’s father was just 25 when he had a major heart attack in the rural Mississippi Delta. By his early 40s, a series of additional attacks had left his heart muscle too weak to pump enough blood to his body. He died in 2013 at the age of 49.
“It was a big jolt for our family,” Dixon, 36, recalled. “For myself, personally, it also got me thinking about heredity. I just wondered whether I was next.”
The death spurred Dixon to get involved in an unusual and ambitious new health study.
Public health experts from some of the nation’s leading research institutions have deployed a massive medical trailer to rural parts of the South to test and survey thousands of local residents. The goal: to understand why the rates of heart and lung disease are dramatically higher there than in other parts of the U.S.
