Health News
By Stacy M. Brown,
Special to the NNPA
from The Washington
Informer
A
website saved her
life.
And Julia Allen, the
national spokesperson for
the American Heart Associ-
ation’s Go Red for Women
campaign, said www.gored-
forwomen.org can save
many more lives if everyone
becomes aware of and
makes good use of the web-
site.
“If you say nothing else
about me or about this
cause, please just point
everyone to the website,”
said Allen, who survived
two heart attacks in one day
in 2013.
“There’s nothing like a
heart attack that makes you
change the way you eat and
lose a little weight,” said
Allen, who is also helping
to spread the word about the
American Heart Associa-
tion’s National Wear Red
Day, Friday, Feb. 6.
Heart disease is the lead-
ing killer of women and is
more deadly than all forms
of cancer, heart association
COURTESY OF AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION
Association Celebrates Heart Health with ‘Red Day’
Shown here with her husband and three sons, Julia
Allen is helping to spread the word about the
American Heart Association’s National Wear Red Day.
officials said. Allen said the
statistics are even more
deadly for African-Ameri-
cans and other minorities.
African-American women
are less likely than white
women to be aware that
heart disease is the leading
cause of death.
Diabetes, smoking, high
blood pressure, high choles-
terol, physical inactivity,
obesity and a family history
of heart disease are all
greatly prevalent among
African-Americans and are
major risk factors for heart
disease and stroke, heart
association officials said.
What’s more, African-
American women have
almost two times the risk of
stroke as whites and are
ried mother of three boys,
ages 14, 11 and 7, she said
she had always put her fam-
ily and friends’ needs ahead
of her own.
She worked a full-time
job, helped each day to get
her children off to school
and participated in various
activities while also prepar-
ing regular meals for the
family.
Allen said she first felt a
heart attack come on while
at work.
Then, even as she felt pain
in her chest, she went home
to make an after-school
snack for her boys before
finally deciding to drive to
the hospital.
“I didn’t want to believe I
could be having a heart
attack,” she said. “But I had
at least two that day. And,
really, I looked on the Inter-
net and came across the
American Heart Associa-
tion’s website, and I was
able to check my symptoms.
And I found that I had six of
the seven symptoms, and
that’s when I knew that I
was definitely having a
heart attack.”
more likely to die at an ear-
lier age as compared with
women of other ethnicities.
The unsettling statistics
include the fact that cardio-
vascular diseases kill nearly
50,000 African-American
women annually, and, of
African-American women
ages 20 and older, 49 per-
cent have heart diseases and
only one in five African-
American women believes
she is personally at risk.
Further, just 52 percent of
African-American women
are aware of the signs and
symptoms of a heart attack,
and as little as 36 percent of
African-American women
know that heart disease is
their greatest health risk.
In Allen’s case, the mar-
February 11, 2015 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 9