Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics 2010 Update (American Heart Association, December 17, 2009) has been issued just in time for American Heart Month, and the news is sobering. Despite the fact that there may be broader awareness in the population about women’s heart disease, there are still disparities in how women are diagnosed and treated, translating into more than 42 million women currently living with heart disease in the United States.

According to the report, one woman dies every minute from cardiovascular disease in the United States.

•Heart disease is the leading cause of death of American women.
•More women than men die of heart disease each year.
•35.3% of deaths in American women over the age of 20, or more than 432,000, are caused by cardiovascular disease each year.
•More than 200,000 women die each year from heart attacks- nearly five times as many women as breast cancer.
•Women are less likely than men to receive appropriate treatment after a heart attack.
•Women comprise only 27% of participants in all heart-related research studies.
•58% of Caucasian women, 80% of African-American women, and 74% Hispanic-American women are overweight or obese.
•Women with diabetes are 2.5 times more likely to have heart attacks.
•48% of adult women have total cholesterol of at least 200mg/dL.
•50% of Caucasian women, 64% of African-American women, 60% of Hispanic women, and 53% of Asian/Pacific Islander women are sedentary and get no leisure time physical activity.
•African-American women, despite their higher risk of heart disease, were 10% less likely to receive aspirin and 27% less likely to receive cholesterol-lowering drugs.
•Some medications to treat hypertension in African-American patients work better and some work worse compared to Caucasian patients.
•Among African-American women over the age of 20, 44.8% have high blood pressure.
•Compared with Caucasian women, Hispanic women are nearly three times as likely to be uninsured.
•Prevalence for diabetes in Mexican-American women is two times higher than Caucasian women.

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