Minnesota's First Lady Joins Mayo Clinic's Effort to Empower Women with Heart Disease

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Minnesota's first lady, Mary Anderson Pawlenty, will be the keynote speaker at the fourth annual Science and Leadership Symposium for Women with Heart Disease. More than 60 women with heart disease from across the country will gather Oct. 8-12 at Mayo Clinic to learn how to become advocates for early detection and proper treatment of the disease for women in their communities.

Pawlenty will speak at 12:30 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 9, about "The First Lady's Heart Health Initiative" and take questions afterward. "Empowering women to improve their heart health starts with knowledge," she says, "The greater a woman's awareness, the greater her ability to reduce the risk of stroke and heart attack."

The symposium is co-sponsored by Mayo Clinic Women's Heart Clinic and WomenHeart: the National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease.

During the intensive five-day training, women from 32 states will be trained as community educators and advocates for the early detection, accurate diagnosis and proper treatment for women with heart disease. They were chosen from more than 125 heart disease patients who submitted applications.

Following the symposium, participants are required to perform 24 hours of community outreach educational activities and document of those efforts.

"These women join our previous symposium graduates in a national network of more than 200 energized and informed advocates," says Sharonne Hayes, M.D., director of the Women's Heart Clinic at Mayo Clinic and the medical director of the conference. "The symposium is really just the start; we give them the tools and then these empowered and activated women do the rest."

Examples of past outreach efforts include a Washington, D.C., gala that raised more than $20,000 for women's heart disease awareness; an American Indian nurse's speech to more than 300 American Indian women in New Mexico; a program to teach Girl Scouts cardiopulmonary resuscitation; and lobbying legislators for increased heart health awareness funding.

Note: Dr. Hayes and members of WomenHeart's board of directors, all young women with heart disease, are available for interviews. Dr. Hayes is available from 2 to 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 6, 4 to 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7, and from 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 8, and in coordination with the first lady's speech on Oct. 9. Please contact Traci Klein at 507-284-5005 to schedule an interview.

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To obtain the latest news releases from Mayo Clinic, go to www.mayoclinic.org/news. MayoClinic.com (www.mayoclinic.com) is available as a resource for your health stories. For more on Mayo Clinic research, go to www.mayo.edu.

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To obtain the latest news releases from Mayo Clinic, go to www.mayoclinic.org/news. MayoClinic.com is available as a resource for your health stories.