Listen to Your Heart: Dr. Annabelle Volgman Says Black Women Should Take Heart Health Seriously - Page 2
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Annabelle Volgman says too many women feel ignored or dismissed by their doctors and the need for a place where they felt they could be taken seriously was a major impetus behind the Rush Heart Center for Women.
Volgman, who is the center’s medical director, has published numerous articles about women and heart disease and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease. WomenHeart is the nation’s only patient-centered organization supporting the 42 million women living with heart disease. The non-profit charity also provides all of these services for free.
“In 12 years of practicing cardiology before opening the Rush Heart Center for Women the message I heard from my patients was their doctors didn’t listen to them. Some women who came to Rush felt the doctors made a conclusion about what was wrong with them the minute they walked through the door. They were diagnosed, not with a problem with their hearts, but rather with a problem in their heads,” Volgman told Today’s Chicago Woman.
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“Many women were told not to worry about their hearts since the problem was most likely just stress or anxiety. In my practice, 95 percent of these women turned out to have heart conditions, which were often missed by the previous doctors. It’s no wonder there have been more women than men dying from heart disease since 1984.”
According to the American Heart Association, every minute in the United States, someone’s wife, mother, daughter or sister dies from heart disease, stroke or other form of cardiovascular disease (CVD).
A third of women, overall, and nearly half of black American women are living with CVD. Heart disease death rates have declined steadily over the last 25 years for men, but the decline has been significantly lower for women, the AHA said.
• HEART for Women Act: A new federal law designed to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of heart disease and stroke in women.
• WISEWOMAN, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program that provides cardiovascular screening and lifestyle intervention services to low-income uninsured and underinsured women.
• Medicare and Medicaid, both of which disproportionately serve women.
• Affordable Care Act, which includes provisions to ban the discriminatory practice of charging women higher premiums than men for insurance coverage.
• Health Equity and Accountability Act, federal legislation to help eliminate health inequities among minorities, women and other groups.
• Public funding and state appropriations that support eliminating health disparities initiatives.
With careful monitoring, especially of pregnant women with heart disease, the outlook is promising, Volgman said.
“There are hundreds of women that come to the Rush Heart Center for Women and ask me to help them deal with their risks,” Volgman told the magazine. “Some have required gastric bypass surgery as a last resort to deal with their weight problems. Most just needed to be told they have to be more active and eat a healthier diet. Some have required angioplasties, stents, open-heart surgeries, catheter ablations, pacemakers and defibrillators. But all of them just needed to know their doctor was helping them get healthier and live a better quality of life. They just needed someone who cared for them.”
Are you interested in learning more about how heart disease impacts African-American women? Are you looking for resources for African-American women to improve their heart health?
WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease presents African-American Women and Heart Disease – What You Need to Know
What: African-American Women and Heart Disease – What You Need to Know, a national patient education webinar
When: Tuesday, February 26, 6:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. CT/4:00 p.m. MT/3:00 p.m. PT
Featured Presenter: Nakela Cook, MD, MPH, clinical medical officer, Division of Cardiovascular Sciences, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute
How: Register today!
Share this invitation with patients, family, friends & co-workers!
