Star Jones has been a trailblazer in multiple industries, including law, television, and health, and is an active volunteer for the American Heart Association.
Given that it’s National Women’s Health Month, she’s partnering with Medtronic, a medical device company, to raise awareness for heart disease in women and shed light on a new survey of women ages 30-50, sponsored by the company, which shows that heart health is less of a wellness motivator for women than maintaining physical appearance or physique (10%) despite it being the number one killer of women. The survey sheds light on a gap in awareness and open discussion around heart health, despite more than 60 million women in the United States living with some form of heart disease.
Jones is deeply familiar with women’s heart disease, as she was diagnosed with the heart disease in 2010 and was told that she would need open-heart surgery. Although Jones said she was overweight for many years and worked to get the weight off, she was surprised by specific symptoms she was experiencing, even when the weight was gone. “The kinds of symptoms that I had were not symptoms that would normally make a woman, at least back then, think heart disease. I was struggling with symptoms like shortness of breath, fatigue, and dizziness or lightheadedness when I would go from seated to standing,” she says to ESSENCE. “I’ve lost 150 pounds. I was eating correctly. I was getting a tremendous amount of exercise. I was doing what I was supposed to do, but the symptoms were so unnerving, I couldn’t just continue to ignore them.”
Jones, thankfully, listened to her body and decided to visit her cardiologist, and was subsequently diagnosed with heart disease. “My doctors did the tests that were necessary, having listened to my body me explaining my symptoms, and we found that I had an aortic valve malfunction, which was causing my heart not to work optimally, and so I had to have open heart surgery with the goal of repairing the aortic valve so we didn’t have to replace it, or receive a heart transplant later down the road,” she shared. “So, literally, I saved my own life by knowing enough about myself and knowing that something was wrong.”
Although Jones came from a family with a long history of heart disease, their health wasn’t a topic. “I can legitimately say that until after I had had open heart surgery, it became a topic of conversation,” she states. Her experience and lack of open communication with her family, inspired her participation in the Letter To My Mother campaign, which encourages women to make heart health a priority, starting with a conversation with their mother, or a woman in their life, about family history, risk factors, and the signs and symptoms of heart disease. The campaign, which is part of Medtronic’s ongoing commitment to leading and advancing clinical research for women’s health, seeks to close the gap in awareness of heart disease and risks, particularly heart valve failure and high blood pressure, in women.
This month, Medtronic encourages women to pledge to talk to their mothers or the women in their lives about heart health and the signs of heart disease they should be looking for, like high blood pressure and irregular heartbeats.
The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease, the nation’s leading voice for women living with or at risk of heart disease, discovered the following statistics:
- One-third of women (30%) have not talked with a healthcare provider about their heart health.
- While more than half of women fear as their mother ages, she will ignore symptoms or not tell them when something is wrong (53%), they also report (56%) never discussing heart health with their mother or other women in their family.
- Nearly half of women (45%) would rather discuss politics, money, or relationships with their mother or grandmother before discussing family health history.
- Women ranked preventive healthcare such as screenings and routine checkups as the most important conversation to have with their mother or mother figure as she continues to age (35%) over finances (12%), retirement (5%), or end of life plans (16%).
- Of women in the sandwich generation with a family history of heart disease, only one-third (35%) asked their doctor to assess their heart risk and only 44% talked about it with their family.
Although it may be nerve-wracking, Jones encourages women, especially Black women, to speak up and advocate for themselves when it comes to their health. “I was having a conversation earlier with a colleague from Medtronic about the underserved communities, people of color and women who are nervous about these conversations, what they mean in their own lives, how to approach them and and even do they have access to the doctors and the treatments that would allow them to advocate for themselves. As we know, heart disease is truly the number one killer of all women. But back when I was diagnosed with heart disease, I thought of it as a man’s disease, and I used to joke that I thought it was an old white guy’s disease,” she shares.
Jones continues, “The numbers tell us that more than half the risk of heart disease is hereditary. So it’s really important to understand your family’s history. So you want to start with that when you are advocating for yourself. And that’s why the letter to my mother campaign is so important, because this is a way for you to have a connection point to start to ask family members about health history, and that way it starts a potentially life-saving conversation.”
Participate in Medtronic’s “Letter To My Mother” campaign here.
