By Nicole Maharaj
June 27, 2005

The Women Mayors Caucus met on Friday, June 10 to discuss the importance of stroke and heart disease in women across the nation. The Chair, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and Vice-Chair, Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes also forwarded a policy resolution to the Children, Health and Human Services committee recognizing stroke and heart disease in women as a critical public health issue and strongly supporting programs promoting comprehensive awareness targeted at women, advancing scientific research to further public understanding of stroke and heart disease in women and improving medical services relating to stroke and heart disease. The resolution was passed by this committee and adopted by the full Conference body. The session was sponsored by Kaiser Permanente.

The Vice-Chair of the Women's Caucus Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes presided over the hour long meeting, and Sharon Gist Gilliam, Chairperson for the Chicago Housing Authority helped in facilitating the informative discussion since Anne Bolger, Senior Vice President of Women's Health for Northwestern Memorial Hospital was unable to attend due to health reasons.

Stroke and heart disease combined take more lives than the next six causes of death combined in the United States. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women worldwide, being responsible annually for nearly 3.4 million deaths. Stroke in women is the second leading cause of death in women, responsible annually for over 100,000 deaths nationally and accounting for 61 percent of all stroke deaths.

Philip B. Gorelick, MD MPH, Head at the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago focused his remarks to the women mayors on stroke in women. His presentation focused on his research in identifying risk factors for stroke, first and recurrent stroke prevention, stroke prevention in high risk populations, and elucidating risk factors for vascular forms of cognitive impairment (VCI) and understanding mechanisms of VCI.

Jeannine Turner, MD on faculty at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago works closely with the American Heart Association to raise awareness in the community, especially minorities and women, regarding cardiovascular health. Dr. Turner's remarks appropriately targeted her remarks in cardiovascular disease in women, prevention, treatment and intervention. Both doctors agreed that African American and Hispanic American women are at a proportionally higher risk for stroke and heart attack than Caucasian women and that both populations lag behind in knowledge of warning signs.

Both doctors presented evidence in their presentations that women who suffer strokes or heart attacks are often not treated appropriately by medical professionals who lack proper understanding of the "unique" symptoms in women calling for enlightenment and educational awareness not only amongst women stroke and heart attack victims but also the medical industry which is responsible for treating female patients.

Doctors Gorelick and Turner challenged the women mayors to think about how they could get involved in educational outreach and awareness campaigns in their respective cities since these inflictions are killing women in large numbers such as "Go Red," a national campaign working to enlighten women regarding the dangers of cardiovascular disease and promoting heart healthy living for every woman by increasing physical activity and improving dietary habits.