Mario Sims

Biography

Mario Sims, PhD, FAHA Mario Sims is Distinguished Professor of Social Medicine, Population and Public Health and Graduate Faculty Director of the Master of Public Health Program at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) School of Medicine. He previously served as Professor of Medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Chief Science Officer of the NIH/NHLBI-funded Jackson Heart Study (JHS), and Interim Director and Principal Investigator (PI) of the JHS. He also co-directed the NIH/NIMHD U54 Health Disparities Research Center at UCR. His research focuses on the social and psychosocial determinants of cardiovascular disease, with particular emphasis on racism, stress, residential segregation, and related factors driving health disparities. He has been a PI on multiple NIH-funded studies on the impact social determinants and resilience have on the etiology of CVD and has authored more than 265 peer-reviewed publications. Mario is a past chair of the American Heart Association’s Social Determinants Committee, a member of the advisory board for the NIH National Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) Institute, and a member of the NIH Clinical Data Science Institutional Review Board. He is a Fellow of the American Heart Association, recipient of the inaugural Devah Pager Distinguished Alumni Award (UW–Madison), and is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.   Mario underscores that his training in sociology has been foundational to his research examining the influence of social determinants on cardiovascular disease inequities.