Thought Leadership > Caring in Community: LaPrincess Brewer, M.D., M.P.H.

Caring in Community: LaPrincess Brewer, M.D., M.P.H.

By Alison Caldwell, Ph.D. Illustrations by Nazario Graziano

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For cardiologist LaPrincess Brewer, M.D., M.P.H., promoting heart health in underserved and under-resourced communities is both a professional mission and a deeply personal calling.

Through her groundbreaking Fostering African-American Improvement in Total Health (FAITH!) program at Mayo Clinic, she partners with Black churches to combat cardiovascular health disparities. She has focused her clinical practice and research on making preventive care more accessible and effective for all patients. She sat down with Mayo Clinic Magazine to share her connection to her work.

Growing up, you witnessed firsthand how cardiovascular disease affected your church community. Can you take us back to a specific moment or experience that first sparked your interest in becoming a cardiologist?

The African American church was the foundation of my upbringing in Charlotte, North Carolina. I saw so many people passing away from preventable diseases like heart disease and stroke. It was devastating to see these people who had helped to raise me pass away so early.

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One of the key moments that I remember was when our pastor passed away as a result of diseases that could have been prevented if he’d had the right care and resources. He was the shepherd of the flock, and there was an immediate change in the atmosphere within the church without its leader. I have carried that moment with me. I still honor our pastor, and I hope that I’m honoring him by giving back and making sure we combat the health disparities that affect the community.

You’ve pioneered innovative approaches to community health. What inspired you to create the FAITH! program, and how has it transformed cardiovascular care in underserved communities?

During my public health studies at Johns Hopkins University, I took a course that charged us with coming up with a way to influence health disparities and to promote health within the surrounding Baltimore, Maryland, community. It was a group project, and we jointly created the FAITH! program. We said, “What’s the institution that has been here for centuries that has had the most influence on this population?” and it was the Black church. And we said, “Why don’t we come up with a program that partners with a Black church that can then promote heart health?”

We can seize this moment to have an impact on communities that have been historically overlooked.

— LaPRINCESS BREWER, M.D., M.P.H.

That’s how FAITH! was born. We approached a church that was a stone’s throw away from Johns Hopkins to see if they would be interested in partnering with us. I was able to expand FAITH! to Minnesota when I started my cardiology fellowship at Mayo Clinic, and it has continued to flourish.

Could you tell us about your vision for the future of preventive cardiology? How might your current work addressing health disparities help shape that future?

I’m truly amazed at the advances we’ve had throughout my career in managing chronic diseases and cardiovascular disease risk factors. I am really looking forward to further innovations through technology, including mobile health, wearables and artificial intelligence that can address many of those risk factors early on to prevent people from getting heart disease in the first place. I also am looking forward to preventive cardiology focusing more on the social and behavioral aspects of medicine and public health, particularly the social and structural determinants of health.

We can seize this moment to have an impact on communities that have been historically overlooked. We need to take a holistic approach — looking at patients’ environments and how those environments influence what we are recommending, and if they even have the capacity to engage in many of our recommendations. We need to help address those environmental factors that may promote or hinder them from achieving the best health outcomes.