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Does volunteering really help your heart? That’s what an associate professor of sociology at Texas State University wants to know.

To study this, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health awarded her and colleagues at Boston University and Boston College a $1 million grant for four years of research.

Lead researcher Soyoung Kim is interested in whether there is scientific evidence for the long-standing theory that volunteering is good for health.

Who is being studied?

The study will use existing data from the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study, which sends surveys to about 20,000 people age 50 and older every two years. The data the Michigan study collects comes from participants across the country.

Kim and her team will look at the amount of time participants say they volunteered and match it to biomarkers such as blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol and inflammation. They want to know if there is a correlation between regular volunteering and more favorable numbers for biomarkers thought to influence cardiovascular health.

“We’re going to break down the genetic contribution to cardiovascular health and the societal contribution of volunteering,” Kim said.

Why learn to volunteer?

Volunteerism was chosen for the study because “people are biologically trained to help others, and helping others has many biological benefits.” she stated.

There are also psychological benefits, such as feeling like your life has a purpose.

To obtain funding, the team needed to do some preliminary research, Kim said.

“We’ve already had some pretty promising discoveries,” she said.

Several other studies have looked at the effects of volunteering on inflammation.

What happens after this study?

Kim said this project is just the beginning. Other social factors that can be compared to cardiovascular risk include neighborhood and social interactions.

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