Every year since 1963, Congress and the President have joined together to proclaim February as American Heart Month. This year, we have cause to celebrate great advancements in combating heart disease as we recognize that the fight against our nation’s number-one killer is far from over.
In late January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided an appropriate prelude to American Heart Month with new data showing that heart disease and stroke rates have declined by approximately 25 percent since 1999. These numbers prove that our investments in research, education, and prevention are paying dividends.
This progress is a landmark achievement, but great challenges remain. The CDC data shows that the leading risk factors for cardiovascular disease – including hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, physical inactivity, and tobacco use – are still too high, and several are actually on the rise. Unless these trends are reversed, experts believe death rates could begin to rise again in the near future.
The CDC report also finds significant and unacceptable disparities in this progress. I am especially concerned with lagging improvement in mortality rates for women.
Misperceptions still exist that cardiovascular disease is not a real problem for women. In reality, heart disease is the leading cause of death of women in our country. In fact, cardiovascular diseases claim more women’s lives each year than the next five causes of death combined. The lack of urgency about such a serious health threat contributes to the deaths of more than 460,000 women nationally – that is a rate of about one woman per minute each year. Here in Maine, heart disease and stroke account for more than 30 percent of all female deaths, more than 2,000 lives lost per year.
I have joined with several of my Senate colleagues in sponsoring the HEART (Heart Disease Education, Analysis, Research, and Treatment) for Women Act. This bipartisan legislation, which is a top priority of the American Heart Association, takes a multi-pronged approach to improving the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of heart disease and stroke.
It begins with education. This legislation would raise awareness of this threat through grants to better educate women and their health-care providers about the unique aspects of care for women in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. It also would provide funding for an educational awareness campaign for older women about their risk for heart disease and stroke.
In addition, it would strengthen analysis, research, and treatment efforts for women. Experts believe that a primary reason women are at such great risk of dying from cardiovascular disease is that the preponderance of studies, the studies their physicians are most familiar with, have been targeted at men. As a result, women with heart disease are less likely to be diagnosed until their disease is at an advanced stage and less likely to receive aggressive treatment. In many cases, it is not even known whether new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat cardiovascular disease are safe and effective in women.
The HEART for Women Act would address this shortcoming by requiring that health-care data that is already being reported to the federal government be broken down by sex, as well as by race and ethnicity. This information would include clinical trial results, and data on pharmaceutical and medical device approval, medical errors, hospital quality, and quality improvement. This body of knowledge will greatly increase the ability of our health-care providers to diagnose and treat cardiovascular disease among their female patients.
Throughout February, you might notice more people wearing red clothing than usual. That’s because the American Heart Association, through its “Go Red for Women” campaign, is encouraging friends, families, an co-workers to choose a day to wear red to show support for all women who are touched by heart disease or stroke. It’s a great way for everyone to demonstrate our commitment to bring the progress we have made against cardiovascular disease to all Americans, men and women alike.