Women of Color Partners

Reaching Women of Color with Heartfelt Alliances
The Heart Truth's Women of Color initiative is reaching thousands of African American and Hispanic women throughout the United States with key campaign messages about lowering the risk for heart disease. The campaign expanded its outreach efforts in partnership with three longtime Heart Truth community partners to implement a series of community events, including Heart Truth workshops to educate women about heart disease and risk factor screenings. These programs are helping to increase awareness of heart disease among African American and Hispanic women in the communities where they live.

• National Latina Health Network (NLHN) launched
  Heart Healthy Day in 2007 by conducting heart health screenings and education sessions in New York City, NY, Houston, TX, Chicago, IL, and Miami, FL, reaching more than 2,000 individuals with The Heart Truth messages. The NLHN’s Heart Healthy Day was covered by Telemundo, a media partner of the NLHN, and reached an estimated audience of 48,430,700. The NLHN also incorporated The Heart Truth into the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) Su Corazon, Su Vida community education program to reach Latinas with low reading and health literacy levels.
  

• National Coalition of Pastors’ Spouses (NCPS) partnered with three churches in Atlanta, GA in 2008 to launch the NCPS’ Heart Truth Pilot Program. This program recruited and tracked approximately 60 African Americans through health education sessions, walking clubs, and regular screenings. At the end of the program, the participants walked more than 9,600,000 steps and had significantly lowered their blood pressure, BMI, cholesterol, and blood glucose.
  

• The Links, Incorporated adopted The Heart Truth as one of its signature programs—HeartLinks—at its National Assembly in 2008. The Links Incorporated began the HeartLinks program in four of its chapters across the country. The four chapters hosted heart health educational sessions, risk factor screenings, and presented a Heart Truth workshop at the organization's National Assembly. Collectively they reached more than 1,500 African American women with The Heart Truth messages.

Women of Color Partner Spotlight

St. Agnes Hospital, Baltimore, MD
Each February, St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland hosts a Red Dress Sunday, a city-wide initiative designed to educate women in the Baltimore community about heart disease and prevention. This year, St. Agnes Hospital reached more than 100 churches and touched 75,000 African Americans with heart health information. Each congregation wore red and received Heart Truth materials along with other heart health information. Throughout the year, St. Agnes offers blood pressures screenings at local malls and education sessions on lowering heart disease risk. Additionally, St. Agnes Hospital works with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to train members of their communities. For example, St. Agnes Hospital hosted a training conducted by the NHLBI to train African Americans about heart disease using the With Every Heartbeat Is Life curriculum. The participants learned how to teach others in their community about heart disease prevention and behavior changes to achieve a heart healthy lifestyle.

Women of Color Partner Organizations

• Association of Black Cardiologists, Inc.—www.abcardio.org
• Black Women's Health Imperative—www.blackwomenshealth.org
• Catalina magazine—www.catalinamagazine.com
• Chi Eta Phi Sorority, Inc.—www.chietaphi.com
• ESSENCE magazine—www.essence.com
• The League of United Latin American Citizens, Women—www.lulac.org/women.html
• The Links, Inc.—www.linksinc.org
• MANA, A National Latina Organization—www.hermana.org
• National Association of Latina Leaders—www.latinaleaders.org
• National Black Nurses Association—www.nbna.org
• National Coalition of Pastors’ Spouses—www.pastorspouses.com
• National Latina Health Network—www.nlhn.net
• St. Agnes Hospital, A Sister's Heart, Baltimore, MD—www.sistersheart.org

Quick Facts Women of Color should know:

For African American women, the risk of heart disease is especially great. Heart disease is more prevalent among African American women than Caucasian women, as are some of the factors that increase the risk of developing it—high blood pressure, overweight, and diabetes.

Hispanic women also have high rates of some factors that increase the risk of developing heart disease, such as diabetes, overweight and obesity, and physical inactivity. Some 83 percent of midlife Hispanic women are overweight or obese, and more than 10 percent have been diagnosed with diabetes.

More than 80 percent of midlife African American women are overweight or obese, 52 percent have high blood pressure, and 14 percent have been diagnosed with diabetes.

Learn more about how your organization or association can help spread The Heart Truth, visit the Activity Ideas Web page.

To include activities to raise awareness about women and heart disease in your faith-based community, visit The Heart Truth's Faith-Based Online Toolkit.