Hi all,

I am sending on this article from today's Toronto Star because it seems to
touch on a lot of issues.  Negative messages, changing supports, funding
and gender issues.  As a feminist I find it interesting that I am to blame
for what is happening and not the medical community.

Anyone have comments?

S


February 14, 1999


Putting their money where heart is


AH, FOGEYDOM. ONCE upon a time, Valentine's Day meant red cinnamon hearts
and those cut-out paper valentines with dreadful Grade 4 puns. Now,
Valentine's Day just brings our annual scolding from the Heart and Stroke
Foundation.

This year's Heart and Stroke valentine thwonked into my consciousness with
all the airy charm of a concrete balloon. ``Women fail,'' said the
headlines. Unfit and ignorant of the menace of heart disease, which is an
equal opportunity killer. Worse still: we're too stressed, too busy working
and caring for our families and two-thirds of us are at an ``unacceptable
weight.''

``It's the leaders within the women's movement we're trying to influence,''
said Dr. Anthony Graham of St. Michael's Hospital.

Feminists, according to Graham, are so powerful that we could give heart
health the same high profile as breast cancer, consistently rated as
women's top concern even though it kills fewer than heart attacks do.

(Hey. Just a thought: if Heart and Stroke thinks all this overwork and
stress is so bad for women, how about lobbying for daycare, elder care,
home care and equal pay for work of equal value?)

More seriously, I'd like to tell the Heart and Stroke a thing or two about
its annual tongue-lashing of women. Insulting us is not the very best way
to engage us in higher awareness of a serious health risk. And by the way,
breast cancer awareness is not a feminist conspiracy against cardiologists.
The reasons for women's fear ought to be obvious. Breast cancer is
specifically a women's disease, it was hugely underfunded until women's
groups started to agitate, it hits women at a much younger age than heart
disease and, at that younger age, it's more dangerous.

Demographically speaking, doesn't it make sense that the ``boomer''
generation (overstressed, as you fellas point out) worries most and lobbies
hardest against the disease that threatens it most imminently?

For your future information, most women do not respond well to framing this
discussion as a competition between two serious diseases. You're right that
women have to get serious, sooner, about heart health. As political
activists know, however, the best way to stir people to action is to offer
them a strong alternative.

If women knew that there was support and help available to prevent heart
disease, they'd line up for it - which is just what they do at Women's
College Hospital, home of Canada's very first Women's Cardiovascular Health
Initiative and Women's Cardiac Rehabilitation program. Thanks to a $400,000
grant from Canada Trust, Women's College was able to set up an appealingly
sleek and attractive small gym. A team of hospital staff, headed by
cardiologists Dr. Len Sternberg and Dr. Vera Chiamvimonvat, kinesiologist
Karen Unsworth (the only full-time staffer), as well as the nutritionist,
clinical care nurse and other specialists, offer individual attention out
of their own volunteer commitment.

Results are impressive. In co-ed rehab programs for heart attack patients,
only 15 per cent of patients who attend are women - and of those, only 5
per cent stay in the program, with 15 to 20 per cent improvement in heart
function at the end.

The Women's College record: 80 per cent in the all-women classes stay in
for the whole six months, improving their heart function by 52 per cent.
Most of the ``graduates'' express greatly increased confidence, optimism
and well-being. Why the difference? You can't fake it. A glitzy new
``Women's Centre'' sign in an otherwise indifferent institution just
doesn't do the trick. The understanding has to be deep, permanent and
evolving, springing from a whole culture that understands women's needs.

At the Women's College program, the practitioners have learned, by
listening, what the patients feel. Older women, it seems, are intimidated
by the competitive atmosphere of male-dominated gyms. They're embarrassed
by co-ed gym work, partly because they're weaker to begin with and so need
a more gradual program. They enjoy the emotional support of small groups of
other women. They're poorer then men, and therefore can't afford costly
gyms and have less access to cars or taxis. Domestic responsibilities can
keep them away. Above all, female cardiac patients can be dragged down by a
depression intensified by guilt. The program has worked out helpful
responses to all these concerns. The rewards - in prevented illness and
restored health - are great.

I asked the Heart and Stroke Foundation how much research money it targeted
for women's heart health, since the disease is so different in women. The
answer: $2 million out of a total of $23 million in research grants
(although, the foundation hastened to point out, any general research might
benefit women as well as men).

I confess, Heart and Stroke did get my attention this year with its rather
negative approach. Next year, maybe they'll brush up their courtship skills
and woo us with a prettier valentine - say, great big grants for
researchers in women's health, at female-friendly institutions. Now that's
the way to a woman's heart.


Michele Landsberg's column usually appears in The Star Saturday and Sunday.