February Faculty Feature

Dr. Sohye Lee

February is American Heart Month and Black History Month. Dr. Sohye Lee, associate professor at the Loewenberg College of Nursing (LCON), combines the focus of those two observances in her research focused on cardiovascular risk factors with minority populations.

Dr. Lee has a clinical background in cardiovascular nursing in South Korea and has volunteer experience at the women’s only cardiac support group at the Minneapolis Heart Institute. It is her experiences in cardiac care that drive her passion for preventative research.

As a doctoral student, Dr. Lee targeted obesity as one of the risk factors of cardiovascular disease and developed a weight-management program that combined text-messaging and peer group support for African American women. She also worked as a graduate research assistant at the University of Minnesota to develop and test a new model to reduce risks for heart disease and stroke for African American men and to test mobile text messaging intervention for breast cancer screening for Korean American immigrant women.

Since joining the faculty in 2017, she has worked to support minority chronic disease prevention and health promotion to reduce health disparities. Her main research interests have been to develop and test cardiovascular risk reduction interventions using peer support and technology for underserved minority populations.  

She recently received an internal grant from LCON to explore underserved women’s perspectives on healthy lifestyle behaviors, which supports her previous research and work that has been published in peer-reviewed articles and featured at regional and national conferences. She said she has been working with Dr. Fedoria Rugless, a director of research in Church Health, to examine African American and Hispanic women’s attitudes toward lifestyle changes to improve cardiovascular health. Dr. Lee is also serving as a convener of the Community of Research Scholar (CoRS) program sponsored by the University of Memphis Division of Research & Innovation. Her CoRS team is focusing on building interdisciplinary collaborations with university scholars and community partners to reduce health disparities among underserved populations in Memphis and the Mid-South. 

Her research is especially important in Memphis African Americans are the predominant race and heart disease is not only the leading cause of death but obesity, a concerning risk factor, is prevalent. According to a 2016 Community Health Needs Assessment conducted by Holleran Community Engagement Research and Consulting for Regional One Health, 72.5% of Shelby County is overweight/obese. Other risk factors include smoking, lack of exercise, diet, family history, age and high blood pressure.

 “My ultimate goal is to develop a cost-effective, judgmental-free, and highly-accessible cardiovascular disease risk prevention program for underserved populations,” said Dr. Lee, who hopes to find external grant funding to help her with this effort. “This is very important in a city like Memphis with a large population of African Americans, particularly women. Minority women are often underrepresented in health research and it is important to understand their barriers and how we can facilitate their access to care.”

She will keep working with her research team and collaborators for a continuation of career-long pursuit of health risk reduction and health promotion in underserved minority populations.