Many people assume the greatest health risk for women today is cancer, but statistics tell a different story. Women are actually 10 times more likely to die of heart disease than breast cancer. In fact, heart disease kills more than 500,000 women each year in the United States; more than all types of cancer combined.
Dr. Anita Kelsey wanted to address the issue of women and heart disease head-on when she arrived at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in 2003.
“My biggest ask was that I be able to start a women’s heart care initiative, and St. Francis was enormously supportive,” she said. “I put together my team with the first grant we received.”
That team, made up of Kelsey, an exercise physiologist, registered nurse, and registered dietician, provides the expertise for St. Francis’ Women’s Heart Program, created at a time when very little money was being invested in preventative care services.
Kelsey was able to create a program that was free to women ages 18 and up, designed to help participants take a proactive approach to heart disease prevention through education and awareness.
Today, that program has expanded beyond the hospital to reach women throughout Greater Hartford by holding events at schools, churches, health fairs, and other gathering spots.
Kelsey and her team are fully mobile, able to offer free glucose and cholesterol screenings, and blood pressure checks to make sure women know their numbers.
Kelsey first became focused on heart disease in women when she trained in cardiology at Duke University.
There, she noticed increasing numbers of women coming in with preventable issues that weren’t diagnosed early enough.
“We did find, however, that women were more likely to take preventative measures and engage in primary prevention,” she said.
They also found that there are subtle differences between men and women dealing with heart disease, making it that much more important to engage women in preemptive measures rather than reactive ones.
“Women don’t recover from cardiac events as well as men do. They have more complications with catheters and worse outcomes overall,” she said. “They also present differently; only 40 percent of women have what are considered the traditional signs of a heart attack — heaviness in the chest, numbness in the left arm — and are more likely to experience an emotional stress trigger than a physical one such as exercise.”
Participants in the Women’s Heart Program receive a comprehensive evaluation, including a complete assessment of cardiac risk factors, education on those factors, a nutrition evaluation and recommendations, and a structured exercise program.
All assessment information and recommendations are then forwarded to each participant’s doctor, who will then follow through with any necessary treatments or therapies.
“The purpose is threefold,” said Dr. Daniel Diver, chief of cardiology at St. Francis. “We help to establish their level of risk, educate, and start them on a management program with exercise, diet, and meds where necessary.”
Diver said the program addresses the fact that women spend their time coordinating care for their families more than for themselves by expanding to reach women outside of the hospital and throughout the community.
Thanks to grants from the city of Hartford and state Department of Public Health, Kelsey said, this outreach was made possible.
“It’s important that we reach women where they are, and that even when we meet with a group, those participants receive individualized attention,” she said.
To that end, each woman who takes part in the program receives key health stats like glucose and cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and other measurements.
“If a woman knows her numbers, what we are telling them has meaning,” Kelsey said. “While we are discussing related topics, they know which apply to them and in what way.”
So far, she said, the overall results are extremely positive.
“We’ve seen, for example, a 2 to 5 milliliter reduction in blood pressure across a whole group of women; numbers like that rival those found in trials for new medications,” she said. “We’ve seen another group have a 1.5 inch reduction in waist size — another risk factor — which is enormous.”
Additional benefits follow these successes, she adds.
When women work toward lowering risk factors like waist size, it automatically comes along with weight loss, blood pressure reduction, and a lower diabetes risk.
“In some cases, we have been able to identify a woman at increased risk and can then facilitate a rapid referral,” added Diver.
Looking down the road, Kelsey only sees the Women’s Heart Program growing from here.
“There are still a lot of women we need to reach,” she said. “We need to get into communities with higher risk women.”
If anyone can make that happen, Diver said, it is his dedicated colleague.
“I have been in a senior administrative role for 25 years,” he said. “Rarely have I seen someone approach their role with such passion, empathy, and concern.”
