Lay summary
I am a public health physician with an interest in cardiovascular disease (CVD) research and prior research experience at the University of Auckland using data generated from the HRC-funded PREDICT-CVD study as part of my Masters in Public Health degree. This doctoral fellowship application aims to better characterise the risk of heart attacks and strokes in adults aged 30-79 with multiple other health conditions, known as multimorbidity. The presence of multimorbidity may increase CVD risk but it may also increase the risk of dying from other reasons. There are significant inequities – unfair differences – in both cardiovascular disease and multimorbidity for Māori, Pacific and South Asian adults. The potential health benefits of this application will be to develop new, ethnic-specific, clinical algorithms for use in routine primary care that account for multimorbidity and competing risks in order to improve equity in CVD risk prediction and enable more holistic care.