Cardiovascular disease is seen as a disease that primarily affects men, yet it kills almost 400,000 women each year, and one-third of women die of heart disease and stroke, according to an op-ed written by Barbra Streisand for USA Today.
Ms. Streisand, who founded the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles and co-founded the Women's Heart Alliance, is in Washington this week to lobby for more and better research on women's heart health. While some progress has been made, women are still underrepresented in many areas of research related to cardiovascular health. For example, Ms. Streisand notes only 1 of 3 study participants are women in the 57 clinical trials for cardiovascular drugs.
The imbalance in research could skew results and result in ineffective applications for female patients, she writes.
In the op-ed, Ms. Streisand called for greater awareness of the issue, policy change, more funding for female-oriented research, and application of new and existing knowledge in preventive care and treatment.
Read the full op-ed here.
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