Dr. Bress is currently an Associate Professor of Population Health Sciences with Tenure in the Divis ion of Health System Innovation and Research and an Investigator at the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System.
Dr. Bress re ceived his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Maryland, and h is Masters of Science in Clinical and Translational Science from the Univer sity of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health with a focus on epidemi ology. He completed his residency in pharmacy practice at Yale-New Haven Ho spital and Cardiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He subseque ntly completed his post-doctoral research fellowship in cardiovascular phar macogenomics at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Dr. Bress is a formally-trained cardiovascular clinical pharmacist and population scientist. His research is focused on the prevention and tre atment of cardiovascular disease, optimizing medication use, and reducing h ealth disparities. He is particularly interested in studying antihypertensi ve medication use, responses, and outcomes to help patients and providers, as well as health systems, payers, governments, and population health manag ers make better decisions about how to treat and control high blood pressur e. He is also interested in genetic ancestry and racial/ethnic differences in antihypertensive medication responses.
Dr. B ress's research is currently NIH-funded as Principal Investigator by a K01 (K01HL133468) and R01 (R01HL139837) from th e NHLBI. He is also PI of an NHLBI R13 Conference grant (R13HL144 012) to support the University of Utah T ranslational Hypertension Symposium. Dr. Bress's research has been published as first author in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Journ al of the American College of Cardiology, and Circulation and has been cove red in TIME Magazine, The New York Times, and CBS radio.
Dr. Bress has established collaborations with a multi-disciplinar y team of investigators in hypertension, cardiology, health services resear ch, epidemiology, and pharmacogenetics at the University of Utah and around the country. He is an active member of the hypertension working groups for two ongoing NIH-funded cohort studies including the Jackson Heart Study (J HS), the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study, a nd the Women's Health Initiative (WHI). He is also an active member of the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) Research Group.
Dr. Bress has received peer-reviewed extramural re search support as Principal Investigator (PI) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) specifically from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Insti tute (NHLBI). He is currently PI of a five-year K01 award which is determin ing the association between genetic ancestry, including individual genetic variants, with blood pressure control, antihypertensive medication response s, and cardiovascular disease outcomes in African Americans. This project w ill identify genetic factors that may account for observed racial differenc es in antihypertensive medication response, potentially identify new approa ches for optimizing antihypertensive medication prescribing and thereby imp rove blood pressure control rates in African Americans. His mentors and sci entific advisors for this award are Lynn Jorde (human genetics), Rachel Hes s (health services research), Rick Kittles (genetic ancestry and health dis parities), Donna Arnett (pharmacogenetics), Paul Muntner (hypertension epid emiology), and Tom Greene (biostatistics).
He a lso received grant support from the biomedical industry as PI for investiga tor-initiated research projects focused on cardiovascular pharmacoepidemiol ogy.
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Topic: Hype rtension and its Consequences.
Dr. Bress knows to expect questions on Covid-19 considering his background in epidemiology and pharmacogenetics.. Ie. Dr. Bress... talk vaccines.
I am a cardiovascular clinical pharmacist with training in ep idemiology and pharmacogenetics. We focus on disparities in prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease with a focus on hypertension and antihy pertensive medication use. Using pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacogenetics, we try to better understand causes of racial differences in medication res ponses and outcomes. We apply these findings to understand the population-l evel impact, generalizability, and cost-effectiveness in diverse groups.