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HEART for Women Act aims to raise awareness among women, providers
Bill would expand WISEWOMEN program and would require gender specific data.
WASHINGTON — Although the overall mortality rate for cardiovascular disease among men has decreased, the mortality rate among women has remained unchanged.
“It’s not a gap, it’s the Grand Canyon,” said Susan Bennett, MD, director of the Women’s Heart Program at George Washington University Hospital. “We often talk about discrepancies in health care, but this is one we should not forget.”
Statistics show 92% of primary care doctors and 83% of cardiologists are not aware that more women die of CVD than men, Bennett said.
“Physicians are also less likely to put women on blood pressure and cholesterol medications, even if they are at similar risk. Women are looking over a chasm at good quality care that’s available, but they are often not getting it,” Bennett said.
Bennett spoke at an American Heart Association advocacy event here. The AHA plans to introduce the Heart Disease Education, Analysis and Research, and Treatment (HEART) for Women Act this month, which it hopes will help correct some of the disparities.
The legislation authorizes grants to educate health care professionals about the prevalence and unique aspects of care for women in the prevention and treatment of CVD. It also authorizes Medicare to conduct an educational awareness campaign for older women about their risk for heart disease and stroke.
About HEART
The bill would further require that health care data submitted to the federal government be stratified by gender, as well as by race and ethnicity. This would include clinical trial data, pharmaceutical and medical device approval data, medical errors data, hospital quality data and quality improvement data.
Finally, the bill would expand the WISEWOMAN (Well-Integrated Screening and Evaluation for Women Across the Nation) program, which provides heart disease and stroke prevention screening to low-income uninsured and underinsured women.
The program is currently in 14 states, and the AHA said it would take $22 million to expand it to all 50 states.
The HEART for Women Act was originally introduced in February 2006, but Sue Nelson, vice president of advocacy for the AHA, said it was stalled by then-chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Joe Barton of Texas. The committee has partial jurisdiction on nearly all health-related legislation.
“Chairman Barton did not want to move on any disease-specific bills until they finished on the National Institutes of Health reform package,” Nelson said. But the reform package was passed in the final hours of the last session. Nelson said the AHA is hopeful the HEART for Women Act will move forward this year.
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Increased research funding
The HEART for Women Act is just one part of the 2007 legislative goals of the AHA.
Raymond Gibbons, MD, president of the AHA and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn., said the current health care structure in the United States is unsustainable.
“The clock is ticking because baby boomers like me will begin to reach 65 years of age by 2011,” Gibbons said. “Between 2011 and 2031, 10,000 Americans will turn 65 years old every day, and that is going to lead to a huge increase in cardiovascular disease and stroke, and related health expense.”
Gibbons said the current ratio of health spending in the United States does not address long-term needs.
“We spend $7,100 per person on health care, $95 on research and $1 on health care quality research,” he said.
The AHA has joined with 200 other health organizations calling on Congress to provide an additional $2 billion for programs in the fiscal year 2007 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill. “We keep slipping. We’ve lost 10% of our resources in real terms for research,” Gibbons said.
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Gibbons said every dollar spent on research yields about $4 to $7 in economic benefit, but the effect is not always immediate.
“Often members of Congress ask, so what are we getting for all this money? But sometimes scientific research can take decades before you get a return,” Gibbons said.
One focus of the AHA is on quality, particularly with its guideline programs. With only $1 per person in federal funding committed to research on quality there are many important questions that cannot be answered, he said.
Advocacy officials say they are cautiously optimistic about their ability to get increased funding for the NIH and other research efforts.
Although Democrats took control of the Congress in the last elections, new pay-as-you-go rules, rising deficits, war funding, and the promise to balance the budget by 2012 will make efforts difficult, Nelson said. – by Jeremy Moore
For more information:
- To petition for the HEART for Women Act, visit www.heartforwomen.org.