Kisa Harris (right) & her mentor Dr. Wendy White
Kisa Harris was working on her MPH from University of Alabama at Birmingham when she returned to the Jackson Heart Study (JHS) at Tugaloo College in Mississippi as an R-IV PHTC Field Scholar. She previously had been involved as both a high-achieving high school student and while pursuing her undergraduate degree at Tugaloo College. A community-based cohort study of risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) among African Americans living in the Jackson, Mississippi area, the JHS aims to explore the reasons for disparities in cardiovascular disease and uncover new approaches to reduce them.
Her previous experience with JHS enabled Kisa to take a lead role as “Co-Principal Investigator in Training” with the Know Your Numbers (KYN) program. The KYN program assesses teens’ knowledge of CVD risk factors, provides them with culturally- and age- appropriate health education on CVD risk factors, and trains them to measure CVD risk factors.
Kisa describes her experience as career changing: “I believe that my future career decisions will be strongly rooted in the principles of community-based participatory research. This experience has also strengthened my desire to work with the African American population.”