The public often believe a disease that receives a great deal of attention poses a greater risk to their health when something such as heart disease may pose a greater danger or risk to them. We have wrongly assumed that premenopausal women are not at risk of heart disease. Currently, doctors are trained to wait until women are in their mid-60s to look for heart disease. We need to revise our treatment strategies for heart disease in women. Although women suffer from heart disease later than life than do men, one of the reasons for a higher incidence of death from heart disease among women is the difference in symptoms between men and women.
Women experience subtler symptoms such as abdominal pain, nausea, and fatigue.
Our hope is that more research will be done, more women will be able to recognize heart attack symptoms and that doctors on the front lines will take women's cardiovascular symptoms more seriously. It was founded in 1990 when it brought to national attention the problem of the exclusion of women from major medical research studies, and the resulting need for greater funding for research on conditions experienced by women. The Society has been the force behind many major advances in women's health such as increasing funding for women's health research, passage of the federal law mandating the inclusion of women in federally funded medical research, establishing the Office of Research on Women's Health at the National Institutes of Health and strengthening U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines to ensure women are included in all phases of a drug's testing.