Y4 medical student completes hypertension research conducted as part of primary care innovation award program

Fourth year medical student Adrienne Clermont recently completed two cardiovascular disease research projects conducted with the Center for Global Health’s CVD team in Haiti. Ms. Clermont was awarded the Primary Care Innovations Grant from the Department of Internal Medicine in 2020, a seed grant program that seeks to support the development of novel, innovative, patient-centered research related to the practice of primary care. Ms. Clermont chose to complete the Scholarly Project required as a deliverable of the program with the Center for Global Health’s cardiovascular disease team in Haiti, and completed two first-author manuscripts via the program titled “Dietary salt intake as a risk factor for hypertension: Findings from a population-based cohort study in Haiti” and “Dietary risk factors for cardiovascular disease among low-income Haitian adults: Findings from a population-based cohort.”

 “Through my Scholarly Project, I gained familiarity with the research literature regarding risk factors for hypertension and CVD in low-income settings (particularly Haiti), as well as the links between sodium intake and hypertension,” says Ms. Clermont. “I also explored the methodological debates surrounding urine sodium measurements and estimation methods for sodium intake, and designed an analysis plan for our project.” She has been an integral part of the Center for Global Health throughout her four years at Weill Cornell Medical College and will be moving on to complete a residency program in Emergency Medicine this summer.