Michele Mietus-Snyder, MD

Preventive Pediatric Cardiologist
Cardiovascular Consultant to the WATCH Clinic, UCSF

Dr. Michele Mietus-Snyder is a preventive pediatric cardiologist and Associate Professor in transition this year from the UCSF Departments of Pediatric Medicine and Physiological Nursing to George Washington University in DC, where she has joined the Children's National Medical Center as the Co-Director of their Obesity Institute. She received her undergraduate and MD degrees from UC San Diego and did her pediatric residency and cardiology fellowship training at The Children's Hospital, Boston, Harvard Medical School. Her interest in the molecular pathways responsible for early, preclinical, atherogenesis led her to pursue basic science research on lipoprotein gene regulation at Harvard and at the Gladstone Institute for Cardiovascular Disease Research. Her studies of redox-sensitive genes important in early heart disease impressed upon her how many cardiovascular risk factors function via common metabolic pathways that promote vascular oxidative stress, including dyslipidemia, unhealthful diet, sedentary lifestyle, hypertension, and psychological stress. The growing epidemic of childhood obesity places children at heightened risk for early atherosclerotic disease through all of these pathways. Dr. Mietus-Snyder is completing clinical research with the Center for Health and Community exploring the role of stress in the disproportionate manifestation of cardiometabolic complications of obesity in inner city children. She continues her research with Dr. Bruce Ames at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute on the role played by calorie-replete but nutrient-poor diets in these inflammatory comorbidities. This project connects to work with new colleagues in Washington DC on the impact of environmental risk factors, including diet, on the epigenome. Her new research projects are exploring the epigenomic interface between genes and the environment as a mechanism for perpetration of cardiometabolic risk across generations trapped in socioeconomic disparity. Working with the public schools in DC and neighboring West Virginia to help evaluate innovative school wellness policies will permit exploration of common mechanisms for prevalence of obesity and insulin resistance, which are two fold higher in these two communities than in the rest of the nation. One school district is urban and predominantly minority, the other rural and predominantly white; both have among the nation's highest representation of families living below the federal poverty level. Dr. Mietus-Snyder remains committed to the development of a comprehensive multidisciplinary weight management program that can better meet the health needs of inner city children. She continues to consult as a preventive cardiologist in the Healthy Hearts Clinic at Oakland Children's Hospital and is working to expand access to evidence-based obesity prevention and treatment in socioeconomically disenfranchised DC communities. These efforts are all aimed at the identification of feasible, effective, preventive health strategies that can be adopted not as an acute intervention, but as a lifelong ethic for heart-healthy living.