Do high levels of pollution and stress lead to increased rates of heart disease?

University researchers will try to answer that question in a new study that focuses on cardiovascular disease being conducted in Detroit.

The five-year, three million dollar study, performed in conjunction with the Detroit Urban Research Center, examines whether factors such as air pollution, socioeconomic background and race affect one"s risk of being diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.

"Detroit was chosen for a number of reasons," said Amy Schulz, assistant research scientist in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education. "The School of Public Health has a long history of working with residents of Detroit, we have had really good working relationships with the people of Detroit and the residents are very proactive in looking for ways to improve health."

Schulz stressed that this is a partnership with the city, not just a case of researchers going into a city to conduct a study. "Residents said they felt this was something to be studied," she said, noting that the community has been instrumental in every aspect of implementing the research.

The project is funded by the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health, and was one of only ten proposals nationwide to receive one of the grants, according to Mary Koch, director of the Brightmoor Community Center in Detroit. One of the requirements for the grant was community input, Koch added.

"When people come and ask us to help them we have to analyze whether or not it"s in our scope," Koch said, noting that cardiovascular disease is definitely within the scope of what needs to be studied right now.

"This area [northwest Detroit] grew up in the 1920s when Henry Ford developed his assembly line, so we have a lot of fun history and our own set of circumstances this area is now about 80 percent black and we need to know what are the disparities and the environmental things going on now that weren"t here 80 years ago when there was more grass and trees and things?"

The study is important because cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death among Detroiters and it"s an area the community had not been working on, said Alex Allen, director of the Butzel Family Center in Detroit and a member of the study"s steering committee.

"The way this project is designed, a lot of data will be collected and data"s important, but we want solutions," Allen said. He noted that while data is good, "disseminating the information in a way that makes sense to people and helping them use it" is what is really important.

"Research is only good if you use it to solve a problem," he said.