Message From The Heart, and for Women's Health

Like many women in her predicament, Kennetha Pettus was stunned to learn she was having a stroke. "How could that be?" she wondered as alert doctors worked to save her life. 

She had little in the way of warning signs and none of the usual risk factors associated with a disease that is the No. 3 killer of women in the United States.

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women; both of these grim statistics appear lost on the general public.

"We have to stop thinking of heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases as a 'man's disease,'" said Pettus, now a board member of the 's regional headquarters in Plainview.

"More women in my community need to know what can happen to us," she said Tuesday, vowing to do her part to get her message across, particularly in area churches serving minority communities. "We need to know the warning signs."

agrees: "We're talking about women's lives here," he said Tuesday. "We're talking about women's survival."

Israel is co-sponsoring legislation in the House of Representatives designed to increase awareness of the disease and its symptoms. The bi-partisan proposal would demand stricter accounting and reporting requirements at the federal level that would be shared with health care professionals and the public.

"This bill prioritizes women's heart health by making sure it's more widely recognized, prevented and treated correctly," said Israel, D-Huntington, flanked by Pettus and Robin Vitale, senior government relations director at the American Heart Association.

With Valentine's Day as a symbolic backdrop, the three addressed staff members and other stroke and heart attack survivors, many clad in bright red attire.

The act "aims to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease in women by educating both women and health care providers about prevention programs the most effective treatments for women," Vitale said.

From the Heart Association's perspective, ignorance and indifference about the disease is a cause for widespread concern.

Vitale said 90 percent of primary care physicians don't know that heart disease kills more women each year than men. Many doctors misdiagnose the symptoms in women and dismiss them. A man presenting with the same symptoms would set off alarm bells with most doctors and result in aggressive treatment through medications

"Think about it," Vitale said. "What's your image of a man having a heart attack? He's older, white and has multiple risk factors, like smoking or being overweight," she said.

The warning signs in women are less obvious, and the heart attack or stroke itself may have symptoms that are not as pronounced as in men.Sometimes, pending heart attacks in women are misdiagnosed as "anxiety, back pain, and even asthma," Vitale said.

The reality, she said, is that over the past three decades, the death rate for heart disease in men has declined steadily (more than 21 percent) while the death rate for women has declined by less than half that rate.

Awareness at all levels, from the patient to the doctor to the researchers, is key to keeping people alive longer, she said.

Essentially, the so-called HEART for Women Act (H.R. 3526/S.438) would require the government to make more information available to doctors, researchers and the public. Israel said he was heading to Washington Tuesday afternoon to advocate for the bill on the floor of the House.

On the podium, Pettus said she wished she could accompany Israel to the capital Tuesday to organize a "Million Women's March" for the cause.

Israel laughed and said he liked the idea.

(To learn more about The American Heart Association and its efforts go to the GoRedForWomen website here. The AHA also recommends a Youtube video entitled "I'm Alive Because Somebody Knew CPR," which is attached to this story.)