The director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health will open this year’s Keynote Series at the ATS 2023 International Conference. Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, MD, will present How Science Promotes Health Equity by Decreasing Disparities on Sunday, May 21, from 8–8:45 a.m. ET in Hall E (Level 2) of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

The NIH designates several U.S. health disparity populations, including American Indians/Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, Blacks/African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, sexual and gender minorities, socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, and underserved rural populations. Dr. Pérez-Stable will emphasize the importance of race and ethnicity as a self-identity social construct and review the NIMHD Research Framework and the PhenX Toolkit, a web-based catalog of standardized measurement protocols for biomedical research.

“Race and ethnicity as a self-identified social construct and socioeconomic status are significant predictors of many health outcomes in ways we do not fully understand, and thus we always need to consider in clinical care and research,” Dr. Pérez-Stable said.

His research interests have centered on improving the health of individuals from racial and ethnic minority communities through effective prevention interventions, understanding underlying causes of health disparities, and advancing patient-centered care for underserved populations.

Recognized as a leader in Latino health care and disparities research, Dr. Pérez-Stable spent 32 years leading research on smoking cessation and tobacco control in Latino populations in the United States and Latin America.

During Sunday’s Keynote presentation, he will provide clinical examples in patient-clinician communication, tobacco use behavior, epidemiology of asthma, management of lung cancer, and prevalence of chronic respiratory diseases. He also will review data on the diversity of clinicians and researchers and discuss the inclusion of diverse participants in clinical studies.

Dr. Pérez-Stable earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1974 and his medical degree in 1978 from the University of Miami. He then completed his primary care internal medicine residency and a research fellowship in general internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, before joining the faculty as an assistant professor in 1983. Dr. Pérez-Stable practiced primary care internal medicine for 37 years at UCSF. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers.

The Keynote Series addresses timely topics of high relevance to the respiratory medicine community with special presentations before the start of the scientific sessions Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday at the International Conference. The featured lecturers are leaders who have made major contributions to the important themes highlighted by this year’s conference program. Each day’s keynote lecture is unopposed by other programming, taking place from 8–8:45 a.m.

The series continues with The Air That I Breathe: Climate Change and Health – A Conversation with EPA Administrator Michael Regan on Monday, May 22, and Reducing Gun Violence Through Advocacy and Action by Physicians and Policymakers, featuring speakers Emmy Betz, MD, MPH; Fatimah L. Dreier, BA, MSc, MBA; and Joseph V. Sakran, MD, MPA, MPH, on Tuesday, May 23.