NHLBI Celebrates Women Scientists

Amanda Mae Fretts, Ph.D., M.P.H.

March 05, 2019

Amanda Mae Fretts, Ph.D., M.P.H., has seen lots of change in the lives of American Indians over the years—and not all of it has been good. “Nearly 70 years ago, heart disease was virtually unheard of in the Indian community,” said Fretts, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington, and a member of Eel Ground First Nation, an American Indian community in New Brunswick, Canada. Nowadays, the heart disease rate for American Indians is almost twice as high as it is for the general population, and Fretts wants to know why. Through her research, she is trying to better understand associations between potentially modifiable risk factors—physical activity, diet, lifestyle, and gene-diet interactions, for example—and the development and progression of heart disease and diabetes, a major risk factor for heart disease. Since 2006, Fretts has been actively involved in the Strong Heart Study, a longitudinal study of cardiovascular disease and its risk factors in American Indian communities in Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota and South Dakota. She is currently working with a Strong Heart Study community to develop a culturally-appropriate cooking and food budgeting intervention for American Indians with diabetes to help improve their diet and blood sugar control. Fretts also works on several on-going projects related to fatty acids, diet, diet-gene interactions, and cardio-metabolic outcomes in the Cardiovascular Health Study, CHARGE (Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology), and FORCE (Fatty Acids and Outcomes Research Consortium).