Kosuke Tamura, Ph.D., FAHA

The role of neighborhood physical and social contexts has been recognized as one of the key socio-ecological factors impacting health in the U.S. Recent studies underscore that such contexts exacerbate disparities in diabetes-related outcomes and risk factors among certain populations, such as racial and/or ethnic groups as well as individuals having comorbidities (e.g., heart disease, obesity, kidney disease). To date, neighborhood research has emphasized investigating residential neighborhood physical and social environments in relation to diabetes-related outcomes and risk factors. These neighborhood factors include the design and features of built (human-made) environments (e.g., mixture of land use, connectedness of streets, walkability) and neighborhood socioeconomic position as well as neighborhood social cohesion, poverty, and crime/safety. Most neighborhood research has exclusively evaluated the area surrounding individuals' home addresses. Focusing solely on residential neighborhood areas creates a mismatch between exposure to neighborhood contexts and health outcomes, a shortcoming of neighborhood research. Dr. Tamura runs the Socio-Spatial Determinants of Health (SSDH) Laboratory in the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. His research focuses on applying geospatial methodologies (geographic information systems, global positioning system) to address the limitations of neighborhood research. He examines associations between exposure to neighborhood physical and social environmental factors and diabetes-related outcomes to potentially explain disparities in diabetes-related outcomes by race and/or ethnicity, rurality, and socioeconomic status at the population level. Dr. Tamura also applies mobile health (mHealth) technologies to better understand real-time psychosocial factors (e.g., mood, stress) in relation to lifestyle behaviors via objective physical activity monitors, such as accelerometers.

Dr. Tamura is an Earl Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator in the Division of Intramural Research at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD). He received his bachelor's degree from Komazawa University, Tokyo, Japan, and a master's degree from Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. He earned a master's degree and doctoral degree from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Prior to joining the NIMHD, Dr. Tamura completed the first phase of a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Population Health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and then completed the second phase of the postdoctoral fellowship at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Dr. Tamura is a trained spatial and social epidemiologist with a special emphasis on neighborhoods and health from a geospatial perspective.