Dr. Lydia Bazzano, principal investigator of the Bogalusa Heart Study and director of the Center for Lifespan Epidemiology Research at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, hopes the Bogalusa Heart Study can use past research to link heart disease risk to early signs of dementia.

The Bogalusa Heart Study, which tracked the health of the town’s children into adulthood, found for the first time that heart disease begins in childhood and is one of the first studies to identify race-based health disparities between Black and White participants.