Faculty Profile
Jennifer A Smith, PhD, MPH
- Associate Professor of Epidemiology
- Research Associate Professor, Survey Research
- Director, Certificate in Public Health Genetics
Dr. Smith is a genetic epidemiologist who investigates the relationship between genetic,
epigenetic, and transcriptomic variation and age-related chronic diseases. She works
with large, multi-ethnic cohort studies to investigates a broad range of traits, including
cardiovascular disease, hypertension, dementia, cognition, and health behaviors. She
studies genetic/epigenetic determinants both as direct risk factors for disease, as
well as the interaction between genetic and non-genetic factors in shaping disease
risk. In particular, she is interested in genetic interaction with social, psychosocial,
and neighborhood determinants of health, especially those that influence socioeconomic
and race/ethnic health disparities.
Dr. Smith is the Assistant Director of the Cohort Development working group for U-M
Precision Health and the Michigan Genomics Initiative. She is a core faculty member
of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health (CSEPH) and is affiliated
with the Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging (MiCDA), the Center for Lifecourse Epidemiology and Aging Research, and the Population, Neurodevelopment and Genetics (PNG) Program. She also directs
the U-M School of Public Health's Certificate Program in Public Health Genetics.
- PhD, Epidemiology, University of Michigan, 2011
- MA, Statistics, University of Michigan, 2009
- MPH, Health Management and Policy, University of Michigan, 2005
- BS, Biological Sciences, Cornell University, 2001
Research Interests:
Genetic Epidemiology, Epigenomics, Aging, Cardiovascular Disease, Cognition, Dementia,
Social Determinants of Health
Research Projects:
Dr. Smith investigates the impact of genetic variation on cardiovascular disease,
cognition, and their risk factors in large, multi-ethnic cohort studies including
the Health and Retirement Study (HRS, N=20,000), the Genetic Epidemiology Network
of Arteriopathy (GENOA, N=3,000), the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN,
N=1,100 with genomic data), the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA, N=6,000),
and the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI, N=3,000 with genomic data). As part
of this work, she collaborates with several field-leading consortia including the
Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium and
NHLBI's TransOmics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) initiative. Another component of
Dr. Smith's work is in the field of social epigenomics. She is interested in how socioeconomic
(education, income, wealth) and neighborhood (neighborhood SES, social environment,
land use) factors influence DNA methylation and subsequent risk of cardiovascular
disease and dementia in multi-ethnic cohorts. Her work includes the development of
high-dimensional mediation methods and their application to social epigenomics.
Stoldt M, Ammous F, Lin L, Ratliff SM, Ware EB, Faul JD, Zhao W, Kardia SLR, Smith JA. DNA methylation at CRP-associated CpG sites may mediate the pathway between educational
attainment and cognition. Journals of Gerontology Series A Biological Sciences 79(8):glae159. PMID: 38896024;
PMCID: PMC11250242.
Opsasnick LA, Zhao W, Schmitz LL, Ratliff SM, Faul JD, Zhou X, Needham BL, Smith JA. (2024) Epigenome-wide association of long-term psychosocial stress in older adults. Epigenetics 19(1): 2323907. PMID: 38431869; PMCID: PMC10913704.
Shang L, Zhao W, Wang YZ, Li Z, Choi JJ, Kho M, Mosley TH, Kardia SLR, Smith JA*, Zhou X*. (2023) meQTL mapping in the GENOA study reveals genetic determinants of DNA methylation in
African Americans. Nature Communications 14:2711. PMID: 37169753; PMCID: PMC10175543.
Zhao W*, Smith JA*, Wang Y, Chintalapati M, Ammous F, Yu M, Moorjani P, Ganna A, Gross A, Dey S, Benerjee
J, Chatterjee P, Dey AB, Lee J, Kardia SLR. (2023) Polygenic risk scores for Alzheimer’s disease and general cognitive function are associated
with measures of cognition in older South Asians from LASI-DAD. Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences 78(5):743-752. PMID: 36782352; PMCID:
PMC10172981.
Wang Y, Zhao W, Ammous F, Song Y, Du J, Shang L, Ratliff SM, Moore K, Kelly KM, Needham
BL, Diez Roux AV, Liu Y, Butler KR, Kardia SLR, Mukherjee B, Zhou X, Smith JA. (2022) DNA methylation mediates the association between individual and neighborhood social
disadvantage and cardiovascular risk factors. Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine 9:848768. PMID: 35665255; PMCID: PMC9162507.
Ammous F, Zhao W, Ratliff SM, Mosley TH, Bielak LF, Zhou X, Peyser PA, Kardia SLR,
Smith JA. (2021) Epigenetic age acceleration is associated with cardiometabolic risk factors and clinical
cardiovascular disease risk scores in African Americans. Clinical Epigenetics 13(1):55. PMID: 33726838; PMCID: PMC7962278.
Schmitz LL, Zhao W, Ratliff SM, Goodwin J, Miao J, Lu Q, Guo X, Taylor KD, Ding J,
Liu Y, Levine M, Smith JA. (2021) The socioeconomic gradient in epigenetic aging clocks: Evidence from the Multi-Ethnic
Study of Atherosclerosis and the Health and Retirement Study. Epigenetics 17(6): 589-611. PMID: 34227900; PMCID: PMC9235889.
Smith JA, Kho M, Zhao W, Yu M, Mitchell C, Faul JD. (2021) Genetic effects and gene-by-education interactions on episodic memory performance
and decline in an aging population. Social Science and Medicine 271:112039. PMID: 30449520; PMCID: PMC6510651.
Full publication list: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/jennifer.smith.3/bibliography/public/
Email: smjenn@umich.edu
Office: 734-615-9455
Fax: 734-764-3192
Address: 2631 SPH I
1415 Washington Heights
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
For media inquiries: sph.media@umich.edu
Areas of Expertise: Aging, Cardiovascular Health, Chronic Disease, Epigenetics, Genetics, Genomics, Precision Health, Social Epidemiology, Women’s Health