Strong Heart Study

The Strong Heart Study (SHS) is a multi-center, longitudinal resource designed to better understand cardiovascular disease in American Indians, identify significant risk factors, promote new research and deliver better health care. To achieve these goals, SHS data should be accessible to interested and qualified researchers, while no harm is done to the study participants who contribute their data. Thus private information in the data and the identity of the participants should be protected, and SHS tribal sovereignty and agreements that include tribal review and approval of all SHS data use requests should be respected. Our study aims to address these issues using advanced technologies and scientific computing toolkits to enable shared, but protected, data access, as well as to understand the data sharing preferences of SHS participants.