There’s an epidemic among American women that’s killing more of us than all cancers combined.

Yet time and again, it seems to get buried in our nation’s urgent discourse around women’s health. 

I’m talking about heart disease and strokes. And it’s not just that they’re our leading cause of death. Women today are dying at twice the rate of men after a heart attack. This is almost entirely preventable and totally unacceptable. But with awareness so low, how could we rally more people around the cause? 

Late last year, I came to Hello Heart’s CEO, Maayan Cohen, with a simple yet bold proposal: 

“I want us to host the Davos of women’s heart health.” 

She smiled and replied, “What do you need from me?”

We got to work. We knew we wanted the summit to be more than a meeting – to convene women in positions of power to drive real impact in closing the equity gap in women’s heart health. 

Women’s heart health is influenced by many factors, like lifestyle, nutrition, health policy, medical gaslighting, low representation in clinical research, products and services built for men, and systemic racism. No single leader or organization can address all of these factors; it requires the same coordinated alignment across the public and private sector that galvanized breast cancer awareness in the 1980s.

So for our inaugural Women’s Heart Health Summit, we engaged the American Heart Association’s Go RED for Women initiative, which has promoted women’s heart health research and care for decades, to co-host with us on a national level. Once they were in, we knew we were onto something big. 

Show time 

Fast forward to May 2024, and 50 of the nation’s top cardiologists, clinicians, policymakers, and business leaders arrived at Miraval Resorts in Arizona for a first-of-its-kind event. 

The best part: It was just us women. It was the first time most of us had been to an event where everyone – the keynotes, the panelists, the attendees, even the Hello Heart staff – were women. 

It felt special. We wanted to create a space where women leaders could be themselves and fully own solving the #1 killer of women. . 

The first day of sessions kicked off with a “State of Heart Health” keynote presentation from Dr. Erin Michos, a professor and world-renowned scholar who leads women’s cardiovascular research at Johns Hopkins University. Her insights made clear to many in attendance just how serious the threat to women’s hearts had become. 

What followed over the next two days were panels focused on unique women’s risk factors – from a lack of quality menopause care to the impact of racial health inequity; from inadequate public and private sector policies to underinvestment in women’s health technology. 

What we learned 

Here are five takeaways: 

1. Heart disease is the #1 killer of women and the problem is getting worse. Heart disease is even set to overtake cancer as the leading cause of death in women under the age of 65. It’s already the leading cause of death for women overall.
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2. Black women are at the center of a public health crisis.. More than 50,000 Black women in the U.S. are dying from heart disease and stroke every year – even though an estimated 90% of these cases might be preventable.
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3. Increasing awareness on the link between menopause and heart health will save lives. Women in menopause have up to three times higher risk of heart disease, partially due to decreases in estrogen. Interventions like the prescription of estrogen, coupled with simple lifestyle changes, can help women in menopause change the odds.
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4. ‍In 2009, 65% of women identified heart disease as their leading health threat. But in 2019, a decade later, it had decreased to 44%. So we're losing awareness as a society about the number one threat to women’s health. 

5. Women tech leaders are building new ways to engage women in protecting their hearts. Organizations like Midi Health, Systole Health, and Hello Heart are deploying tools that specifically address women’s unique health risk factors – and it’s a winning approach.

For more insights – there were a lot – you can watch full clips of each panel and presentation at the event website: helloheart.com/womenshearthealthsummit2024. 

Our commitment 

Faced with statistics as dire as these, talk is not enough. We focused the final session of the summit on concrete actions we could take within our organizations to drive real change and impact and will be sharing progress along the way.

Are you committed? Share with us what you’re doing for women’s hearts this year. 

Then join the waitlist for next year’s summit here. And feel free to send any feedback and ideas to us at events@helloheart.com. 

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