Transforming the Landscape of Women's Heart Health "BIA (be-ya) yourself"

NASHVILLE, Tenn., July 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Heart disease is #1 killer of women in the US- causes 1 in 5 deaths- more than all cancers combined. More than 60 million US women are living with heart disease: majority without any warning signs. Nishtha Sareen MD MPH, Founder and Medical Director for Women Heart Health Program at Ascension Health System in MI and TN provides expert insight on the challenges and opportunities after pioneering 2 statewide programs and over 11 centers dedicated to this pressing issue. This is the first narrative of a series: my next write up will highlight focused patient journeys and conclusions.

Whether scarcity of female representation in clinical trials or delayed presentation, each is driven by a single root cause - lack of advocacy for in-depth women's cardiovascular care at physician and population levels. Medical curriculum does not include dedicated training in female predominant (angina with open arteries, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) and female specific (obstetric, menopausal and gynecological) disorders. 

From a physician's perspective, after over 12 years of training and inevitably large loans to pay, patient care compensation becomes a critical determinant in practice of medicine. Current patient care compensation models and quality metrics do not support gender-specific parameters. Developing new programs and algorithms to diagnose and manage female specific ailments is adjudged a time-consuming task that takes away from productivity and accordingly compensation.

Interventions to address this include training courses for physicians including symposia, books and webinars with CME credits. Credible, patient focused, free-of-charge physician podcasts called "BIA for you, for them" and book "BIA she is the force" under initiative https://www.biayourself.com/ are attempts in pursuit to weld those discrepancies. Focusing on interrelated disease management affecting our women is paramount. There is sprouting enthusiasm globally to assimilate viewpoints from those who have spent energy, time and resources dedicated to women's cardiovascular health.

Another high-priority area that needs emergent scrutiny is effective community engagement tactics. Most women still believe that breast cancer is the colossal killer, even though heart disease kills 6 times more women- a heartbreaking statistic. Mobilizing, educating and sensitizing our community is vital - from routine screening, to recognizing symptoms and risk factors, to ensuring compliance with testing and medications: each step calls for deliberate collaboration. Every single one of us must prioritize women's heart health crisis with harmony, grit and advocacy: transformation will follow. "BIAyourself"

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