Raising Awareness About Our #1 Killer
National Women's Heart Week February 1-7 is an outreach program that combines fun, free activities with heart health screenings. By partnering with local organizations, we can help women come together and encourage fitness, promote stress reduction activities and learn about heart-healthy eating and gender-specifics on women's heart disease. The 7 focus days of Women's Heart Week promote prevention, education, symptoms awareness and early intervention.

An Important Message for Women:
Heart Disease is the number one killer of American women. Recognizing symptoms and risks, making lifestyle changes and getting timely care can save a woman's life. Women's Heart Week is a national outreach campaign aimed at improving women's outcomes from this deadly disease. Heart disease is America’s leading killer of women over the age of 34. Most women are not aware of this fact and fail to recognize their own risk factors for heart disease. Women’s symptoms, especially those that are milder, often go ignored. Women often miss out on critical opportunites to save their own lives. Women's Heart Foundation (WHF) recognizes that women are busier than ever as they juggle career, family and care-giving responsibilities. For many, each day resembles a jig–saw puzzle in which a woman is required to piece together her time and obligations. Now, more than ever, women need to take time out for themselves and be given a reminder: Take Care of Your Heart.

To Healthcare Providers:
WHF is always looking for new health partners to implement its programs and is proud to welcome Curves® for Women, Slim & Tone, Slender Lady, Shapes USA and other women's fitness clubs as new participants for this outreach. WHF provides collateral materials with bookmarks, promotional gifts and a woman's health tracker card. WHF also provides a sample heart risk screening tool for free download. This screening tool with procedure for follow-up has been piloted by a leading healthcare institution. Although the tool is copyrighted, WHF conveys free use of the material, so long as acknowledgement is provide the author: The Women's Heart Foundation. This tool may be modified and revised in accordance with your individual institution's guidelines and WHF accepts no responsibity for the reliability of the screening tool.

Your target audience is women of all ages seeking better heart health care for themselves and their families. Let us hear from you by January 1 so we can post your event on our website. And please send us a report about the outcome of your event(s).

Focus Days
The WHF urges hospitals across the country to open their doors to women during National Women's Heart Week to offer free heart screenings and healthy lifestyle counseling, starting February 1 - National Women's Heart Wellness Day, and to combine these screenings with other heart health activities for the entire family so that a woman will be able to participate without feeling conflicted about the amount of time spent away from home.

Follow the 7 Focus Days of Women's Heart Week as a guide for holding a successful outreach event with vendors and activities all coming together for promotion of women's heart health. The Focus Day topics represent a holisitic approach to women's heart wellness and awareness and include

• Feb 1: Risk and Symptoms Awareness

• Feb 2: Exercise and Fitness

• Feb 3: Nutrition and Supplements

• Feb 4: Holistic Health and Stress Management

• Feb 5: Medication Safety

• Feb 6: Health Care Self-Management

• Feb 7: Positive Self-Image

Sixteen hospital partners in New Jersey implemented some form of the Women's Heart Week program in 2004, and this number continues to grow. In 2005, WHF partnered with the St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center and the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, NJ for a Saturday program exposing 40,000 shoppers to a critical health message with 360 women receiving heart risk screenings by hospital nursing personnel.

Statistics on Overweight Adults and Children and Reported Activity Levels
Less than one-third (31.8 percent) of U.S. adults get regular leisure-time physical activity (defined as light or moderate activity five times or more per week for 30 minutes or more each time and/or vigorous activity three times or more per week for 20 minutes or more each time). About 10 percent of adults do no physical activity at all in their leisure time.[1]

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight (BMI > 25, which includes those who are obese).[7] All adults (20+ years old): 129.6 million (64.5 percent) Women (20+ years old): 64.5 million (61.9 percent) Men (20+ years old): 65.1 million (67.2 percent) Nearly one-third of U.S. adults are obese (BMI > 30). All adults (20+ years old): 61.3 million (30.5 percent) Women (20+ years old): 34.7 million (33.4 percent) Men (20+ years old): 26.6 million (27.5 percent)[2]

About 25 percent of young people (ages 12–21 years) participate in light to moderate activity (e.g., walking, bicycling) nearly every day. About 50 percent regularly engage in vigorous physical activity. Approximately 25 percent report no vigorous physical activity, and 14 percent report no recent vigorous or light to moderate physical activity.[3]

Interestingly, according to disease reports from the New York Department of Health and the 2004 Women's Heart Day program in Manhattan, while diabetes rates are soaring around the country, the incidence of diabetes in lower Manhattan is going down. Why? The average New Yorker walks four miles a day!

Launching the 10,000 Steps Campaign
The Women's Heart Foundation is using Women's Heart Week to promote a nationwide launch of a 10,000 Steps walking program on February 1 - National Women's Heart Wellness Day, by asking each Governor to participate with a proclamation and call to action for all citizens to walk to reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and obesity. It is recommended that all healthy adults walk 10,000 steps every day -- the equivalent of about four miles. This amount of exercise has been shown to optimize health and can prevent many diseases.

The 10,000 Steps program is also called "The President's Challenge" and is supported by a website: www.presidentschallenge.org where the entire program is outlined including incentive prizes for adults and children sticking with the program for six consecutive weeks. This program is conducive to occupational health settings. The health and fitness leaders can post a board with enrollees and organize the incentive prizes through the President's Challenge website. Just a little positive feedback works wonders. Women's Fitness Gyms are great places to host an Aerobic 10,000 Steps program which can be used as enhancement to the regular workout. Community leaders can get area high schools involved, through Physical Education teachers, by charging students with conducting "Walkability" surveys, then working collaboratively to submit results of the surveys to local planning board officials. Follow guidelines from the Girl Scouts USA "Active Living By Design" program to begin thinking about ways to create destination points in the community to make exercise safer and more fun.

It is important that each community assign a "walk monitor" in charge of collecting walk tracking information. Each person would be asked to track the number of steps daily and bring a copy of her daily recorded steps to the walk monitor once the person reaches a total of 50,000 steps, then 150,000 steps, then finally 300,000 steps for receipt of a reward.

If weight loss is the goal, it is recommended to walk 12,000 to 15,000 steps a day and keep a daily log for recording dietary intake as well. Keeping a dietary intake log is a great way to reduce caloric intake.

WHF is partering with communities of faith to carry its critical health message to the forefront with a Women's Heart Day being planned the first Saturday in February at the Trenton War Memorial in New Jersey from 1-5 PM. There will be food demos, music, dance and special guests. The first 50 registrants of the 10,000 Steps program will receive a free pedometer to count their steps. WHF is working with a local high school to offer rewards to participants who stick to the 10,000 Steps program for 12 consecutive weeks with prizes to be distributed at its annual Run for Your Heart event held Mother's Day weekend (you must be present to win and bring your completed walk log -- meeting the required number of steps walked. No prizes will be mailed). Walker's log must be presented to the Race Marshall by 9:00 A.M. the morning of the event in order to qualify. Awards are based on the honor system of reporting steps. Record your steps using the Walker's Log form. Mother-daughter teams who walk the most steps will recieve further awards.

Visit www.walking.about.com. This site also offers great support to walkers that includes:
   - a weekly newsletter
   - tracking of steps and nutritional information
   - walking support
   - diet and nutrition tips and tools
   - recipe of the day
   - focus questions
   - word of the day
   - goal-setting
   - fun activities to help keep you focused
   - the opportunity to share through forum or chat.

So take it one step at a time. It takes time to build new healthy habits. Follow along each day to walk, exercise, eat right, set and achieve goals - and have some fun along the way.

There are many activity-based programs outlined herein with support documents, downloads and website links. All represent a CALL TO ACTION to be more active to prevent early death from heart disease. It's time for families to get involved. Take action.

Each 10,000 Steps participant is expected to check with her health care practitioner before starting a new exercise program, then, accept the President's Challenge to become a healthier American. Get your family moving. Be fit. Take Care of Your Heart©.