Campaign highlights risks to women’s health [Video]

In Canada, heart disease and stroke is the number on cause of premature death among women, and 89 per cent don’t know the risk factors unique to them.

That’s why the Canadian Heart & Stroke Foundation has launched a new campaign highlighting the factors unique to women, which change and vary over the course of their lives.

“Research historically has mostly been focused on men until recently,” says Christine Faubert, who serves as the Canadian Heart & Stroke Foundation’s director of health equity and mission impact. “That’s why right now there is emerging evidence and information for women.”

A stroke happens when blood stops flowing to any part of the brain, damaging brain cells. The campaign wants to make women aware there are varying risk factors during their reproductive years and beyond. Estrogen’s protective effect on women’s heart and brain fluctuate at different stages leading to the unique risk factors.

During reproductive years, women tend to be at …