Women and Heart Disease: A Summit on Eliminating Untimely Deaths in Women

Nanette K. Wenger, MD

Professor of Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta, GA

 

Rita Redberg, MD

Director, Women's Cardiovascular Services, University of California, San Francisco, CA

Editor, Archives of Internal Medicine

 

John G. Canto, MD, MSPH

Director, Center for Cardiovascular Prevention, Research & Education, Watson Clinic

Director, Chest Pain Center, Lakeland Regional Medical Center, Lakeland, FL

 

Anne B. Curtis, MD

Chief, Division of Cardiovascular Disease, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL

 

Harlan M. Krumholz, MD, SM

Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT

 

Vera Bittner, MD, MSPH

Section Head, Preventive Cardiology, Division of Cardiovascular Disease, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL

 

 

This groundbreaking Minnesota initiative was presented by the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation and Minneapolis Heart Institute®, in partnership with the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota.

 

Summit faculty and participants worked together to identify and address gender inequalities in care for women with heart disease. The Thursday CME program featured keynote addresses and panel discussions with 12 national experts and 20 regional leaders. On Friday, participants joined faculty members for a “think-tank” discussion to formulate the next bold actions needed to end untimely deaths of women from heart disease.

 

Four focus areas were identified to help to chart the “next frontiers” in the quest:

 

·   Acknowledge progress made in increasing awareness, treatment, and primary and secondary prevention to reduce morbidity and mortality of heart disease in women.

·   Highlight known and potential sex differences in symptoms, treatment and outcomes.

·   Identify delivery strategies to remove barriers to and increase appropriateness and speed in receipt of cardiovascular care for women.

·    Determine the next efforts to raise community awareness and increase primary prevention efforts to reduce the burden of heart disease in women.

·    Respond to healthcare and insurance reform in light of Minnesota’s unique and lower cost delivery of care.

Cardiologist, Women’s Heart Program,

Minneapolis Heart Institute® at Abbott Northwestern Hospital

 

Director, Women's Heart Clinic, and Associate

Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

 

Professor, University of Minnesota School of Nursing

Research Consultant, Women’s Heart Health Program, Minneapolis Heart Institute® at Abbott Northwestern Hospital