FACE THE FACTORS! • • • • Public health campaigns tend to focus on preventing diseases such as cancer. Equal attention needs to be paid to heart health. As a society, Go Red for Women has been so valuable,” Dr. Narula said of the Association’s campaign. “We need to continue to raise awareness with aggressive public health campaigns.” As caregivers and providers, women tend to care for others before themselves. “We’re so focused on everyone else,” Dr. Narula said. “It’s not our natural instinct to help ourselves.” Many women downplay symptoms that could be signs of heart disease, attributing palpitations to stress and chest discomfort to acid reflux. “Not understanding the risk, or thinking the symptoms are not related to the heart, or it’s all in their head, is the perfect storm of how women downplay it,” Dr. Narula said. Historically, heart disease research has focused on men, who also die more from cardiovascular disease than any other condition. It accounts for 1 in every 4 male deaths. As of 2020, less than 40% of clinical trial participants were women, an alarming gap that needs to be addressed to ensure research is inclusive of women’s unique needs. “For a very long time,” Dr. Narula said, “women weren’t enrolled to the same degree in trials as men. It’s taken the medical establishment a long time to get the understanding that we are not just a smaller version of men. We have our own biological makeup and our physiological processes are different." 31
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