@San Francisco Bay Area

Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial group and the largest immigrant group in the United States. Approximately 7.7% of the overall US population and 33.1% of the San Francisco Bay Area population is Asian American. People of Asian ancestry come from more than 40 different ethnic groups, each with their own cultures, lifestyles, genealogies, and disease risks. However, most health statistics treat Asian Americans as a single group, masking differences in disease patterns and impeding the development of effective precision medicine strategies to improve clinical care and prevent diseases for Asian Americans. 

The Multiethnic Observational Study in American Asian and Pacific Islander Communities (MOSAAIC)@San Francisco Bay Area (SF Bay Area) is based out of the Stanford Prevention Research Center in Stanford’s Department of Medicine. MOSAAIC@SF Bay Area is part of the nationwide MOSAAIC study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to address key knowledge gaps in Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander health research.

Goals: 

Short-term: Gather comprehensive health data on East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian to establish cardiometabolic profiles and a biobank of biological samples.

Medium-term: Follow participants over time to assess associations between baseline profiles and health outcomes such as metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disease, stroke, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, mental health conditions, and other disorders.

Long-term: Obtain repeated measurements and conduct omics profiling to understand risk profiles in relation to the physical and mental health of Asian Americans and to develop strategies for disease prevention and early detection.

The Nationwide MOSAAIC Cohort

MOSAAIC@SF Bay Area is one of five clinical/community field centers across the country that are part of the nationwide MOSAAIC study funded by NHLBI. Along with Stanford, University of Hawaii, University of Chicago, Fox Chase Cancer Center at Temple University Hospital, and NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center are recruiting Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders to fill critical gaps in health research on these groups. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center serves as the data coordinating center for the study.

News