The RESTORE (Addressing Social Determinants to Prevent Hypertension) Health Equity Research Network comprises an interdisciplinary team of investigators from institutions across the country.

RESTORE Network Coordinating Center Team

Gbenga Ogedegbe, MD, MPH, RESTORE Network Coordinating Center Director

Dr. Ogedegbe is director of NYU Langone’s Institute for Excellence in Health Equity and the Dr. Adolph and Margaret Berger Professor of Medicine and Population Health. He is an internationally renowned physician–scientist and expert in health equity research with a focus on implementing evidence-based interventions targeted at cardiovascular risk reduction in minority populations. He has led numerous National Institutes of Health grants and authored or co-authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and reviews. Learn more about Dr. Ogedegbe.

Tanya M. Spruill, PhD, RESTORE Network Coordinating Center Co-Director and Intervention Core Leader

Dr. Spruill is associate professor in the Departments of Population Health and Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. She is a clinical psychologist and behavioral scientist whose primary research interests concern the adverse effects of chronic stress and related psychosocial risk factors on hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic diseases. Her research focuses on developing and testing scalable psychosocial interventions and adapting these interventions for racial and ethnic minority groups to improve chronic disease prevention and management and promote health equity. Learn more about Dr. Spruill.

Collin Popp, PhD, MS, RD, RESTORE Network Coordinating Center Program Manager

Dr. Popp is an early career investigator in the Department of Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. His background is in nutrition and exercise physiology, and he carries the Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist (RD/RDN) credential. Dr. Popp completed a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association, Strategically Focused Research Network in obesity, in 2020. His research focuses on bio-behavioral interventions targeting weight loss and weight loss maintenance. In particular, he is interested in the effects of lifestyle interventions on body composition, energy expenditure, and metabolic adaptation. Additional interests include the impact of social determinants of health on obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Alexis Bartelloni, MSPH, CHES, RESTORE Network Coordinating Center Program Coordinator

Ms. Bartelloni is a public health professional with experience in public health research, community health education, and the federal health sector. She has worked at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Center for Health Equity on community-based studies testing dietary and peer-mentoring interventions for low-income and minority adults. She also previously worked at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Innovation Center on implementation of new healthcare payment models.

Core and Component Leaders

Daichi Shimbo, MD, Blood Pressure Measurement Core Leader

Dr. Shimbo is professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology in the Department of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He is a board-certified cardiologist and co-directs the Columbia Hypertension Center, a multi-disciplinary center of excellence. Dr. Shimbo’s clinical interests include the accurate diagnosis and treatment of hypertension, and evaluating the cardiovascular manifestations of hypertension. His research focuses on behavioral, psychosocial, and biological processes in the pathogenesis of the increased cardiovascular disease risk associated with hypertension.

Paul Muntner, PhD, Statistical Core Leader

Dr. Muntner is professor of epidemiology and associate dean of research in the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His research focuses on hypertension, high cholesterol, and cardiovascular disease. He was a member of the 2017 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association blood pressure guideline and the 2021 American Heart Association Scientific Statement on the management of stage 1 hypertension in adults with low 10-year cardiovascular disease risk. Dr. Muntner has decades of experience leading epidemiology studies and randomized trials and leading data coordinating centers supporting National Institutes of Health– and industry-funded studies.

Andrew Moran, MD, MPH, Cost and Policy Component Leader

Dr. Moran is assistant professor of medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and co-leads the Columbia Outcomes Research and Decision Analysis Program. He serves as a primary care physician and trains medical students and residents in clinical care and medical decision-making. Dr. Moran’s research focuses on the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular disease and other chronic, noncommunicable diseases in the United States and abroad in low- and middle-income countries. His work is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Joanne Penko, MS, MPH, Cost and Policy Component Leader

Ms. Penko is a research analyst and project manager in the Division of General Internal Medicine's Center for Vulnerable Populations at the University of California San Francisco. She works with Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo to support the work of the Cardiovascular Disease Modelling Group and other projects. Prior experience includes analytic and management work with epidemiologic studies of autoimmune disease, early childhood development, traumatic brain injury, diabetes, and aging.

Chidinma A. Ibe, PhD, Community Health Worker Component Leader

Dr. Ibe is assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and associate director for stakeholder engagement at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. She is a social-behavioral scientist whose research focuses on interventions to optimize uptake of community health worker interventions across diverse healthcare settings. Dr. Ibe is co-leader of the Community Engagement Core of the Mid-Atlantic Center for Cardiometabolic Health Equity, which will test the effectiveness of multi-level strategies for improving cardiometabolic health outcomes among socially disadvantaged populations in Maryland and translate them into clinical and public health practice and policy.

Ijeoma Opara, MD, Community Health Worker Component Leader

Dr. Opara is a double-board certified assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at Wayne State University School of Medicine, associate program director of the Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Residency, and attending physician with Wayne State University Physician Group. She provides clinical care to a chiefly underserved population, supervises resident clinics, and teaches inpatient and ambulatory medicine. Dr. Opara’s areas of academic interests are in health equity, justice, social and structural determinants of health, global health, and interprofessional education. She is a lead investigator on multiple local and international interdisciplinary research projects and partners with community-based organizations to uplift the health of disenfranchised populations.

Lisa A. Cooper, MD, MPH, Community Engagement Core Leader

Dr. Cooper is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is also the James F. Fries Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Cooper is the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. She received a MacArthur Genius Award in 2007 for her research on the influence of race and ethnicity on patient-physician relationship and health disparities. She has more than 20 years of experience engaging community partners and stakeholders to implement randomized trials and identify interventions that alleviate disparities in social determinants of health and health outcomes including hypertension.

Project Leaders

Joseph E. Ravenell, MD, Principal Investigator, Community-to-Clinic Implementation Program

Dr. Ravenell is associate professor in NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s Departments of Population Health and Medicine and associate dean for diversity and inclusion at NYU Langone. He has been a principal investigator of several National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant awards focusing on colon cancer screening and cardiovascular disease prevention among Black men in urban settings. His community-based research has led to a network of more than 200 community-based sites including barbershops, faith-based organizations, and social service agencies. Dr. Ravenell’s community-based research was the subject of an invited TED talk he delivered in February 2016, which has received over 1 million views. Learn more about Dr. Ravenell.

Andrea Cherrington, MD, MPH, Principal Investigator, Equity in Prevention and Progression of Hypertension by Addressing Barriers to Nutrition and Physical Activity

Dr. Cherrington is professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She serves as director of the UAB Program in Clinical and Population Health Sciences and the Intervention and Translation Core within the UAB Diabetes Research Center, and is a multiple principal investigator for the recently awarded grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish the Deep South Center to Reduce Disparities in Chronic Disease. Her research focuses on developing, implementing, and evaluating community-based interventions to improve the outcomes of disadvantaged populations at high risk for developing chronic disease, specifically diabetes. Dr. Cherrington remains clinically active in ambulatory medicine at Cooper Green Mercy Health System, Alabama’s only county-owned, safety net clinic in the greater Birmingham area.

Philip Levy, MD, MPH, Principal Investigator, Linkage, Empowerment, and Access to Prevent Hypertension

Dr. Levy is the Edward S. Thomas Endowed Professor of Emergency Medicine at Wayne State University, where he currently serves as assistant vice president for translational sciences and clinical research innovation. He is also chief innovation officer of Wayne Health. Dr. Levy is a leading cardiovascular disease researcher who has overseen more than 110 funded studies from various entities including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Since March 2020, he has been leading Wayne State and Wayne Health’s mobile health unit program, which has been a critical component of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stephen Juraschek, MD, PhD, Principal Investigator, Groceries for Black Residents to Stop Hypertension

Dr. Juraschek is assistant professor of medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is a clinician investigator with expertise in epidemiology and clinical trials. His primary area of interest is blood pressure regulation with standing and its relationship with adverse events such as falls and syncope. He is currently involved in several clinical trials examining a healthy eating pattern, the DASH diet, as well as sodium reduction in relation to cardiovascular risk factors, physical function, and blood pressure. He is also the principal investigator on a study that examines the effects of healthy diet on subclinical cardiovascular disease, in particular, high sensitivity troponin and NT-proB-type natriuretic peptide.

Yvonne Commodore-Mensah, PhD, MHS, RN, Principal Investigator, Home Blood Pressure Telemonitoring Linked with Community Health Workers to Improve Blood Pressure

Dr. Commodore-Mensah is assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. She is a cardiovascular nurse epidemiologist whose research seeks to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease risk among Africans locally (United States) and globally (sub-Saharan Africa) through community-engaged research. Her research expertise includes immigrant health, global health, cardiovascular disease epidemiology, and social determinants of health. Dr. Commodore-Mensah was awarded the American Heart Association Martha N. Hill New Investigator Award in 2016. She served on the writing committee of the 2019 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Clinical Performance and Quality Measures for Adults with High Blood Pressure.