Heart disease kills more women each year than ALL cancers, chronic lung disease, pneumonia, diabetes, traffic accidents and AIDS combined.

One in eight women will develop breast cancer over the course of her lifetime, but only one in 40 will die of it. One in every four women will die of coronary artery disease or heart attack. One-third of these womens’ heart attacks will go undetected. More than one out of five women will have some form of cardiovascular disease.

This disease claims the lives of more women than men each year, yet women only make up 25% of participants in heart-related research studies. While this is improving, women still remain under-represented in many studies that have set the standard for detection and treatment of cardiovascular disease. Even though valuable information about heart disease has been gathered, the model of detecting cardiovascular disease has been based on and designed for men. Not all the data have been applicable to women.