 Thank you so much for tuning in to In the Studio here at Davis Media Access. My name is Autumn Lab-A-Reneau, and I'm your host today. And we're talking about women's health week, specifically and in general, women's heart health. And I have with me two wonderful guests today. I'd like to introduce Dr. Amparo Villablanca, who is head of the UC Davis Women's Cardiovascular Health Program. And we have Heather Caswell, who is the owner and style coach at the wardrobe in downtown Davis, and also a women's heart health advocate. So thank you both so much for joining me today. Thank you. Thank you. We're talking first about national women's health week, which happens this week, this year May 14th to 20th. And tell us a little bit about what that is and where we can get more information. Sure. Women's Health Week is started by Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health. And the whole concept is really for women to devote one week, we should really devote the whole year, one week to advocating for our own health and for adopting healthy behaviors and really taking care of ourselves, empowering ourselves to take care of ourselves. So what kinds of things should we be doing during this week? Scheduling doctor's appointments. Scheduling doctor's appointments for screening, preventive health screening, adopting heart healthy lifestyles, including physical activity, healthy diet, managing stress, and really just spending time taking care of ourselves. We're very good at taking care of everyone else in our lives and we really need to recognize that a healthy woman is a healthy family. That is very true. I just came off some caretaking of my parents for several years and one of the things that happened during that time is I really stopped sleeping and I didn't understand the correlation between stress and lack of sleep. And so now I'm making sure to get my seven to eight hours a night. Yeah. And that's perfect. And I think that we have a misperception about sleep. In fact, I just talked to a patient this week who told me that she didn't think it was very important, didn't pay attention to her sleep. But we know that sleep, adequate amounts of sleep, at least seven hours a night is critically important for a number of health conditions and for our own well-being. That's making a huge amount of difference for me. So moving from that week in general, which we're going to be celebrating and encouraging people to women to take care of ourselves, you focus obviously on women's heart health. And I'm going to read from my notes here for a minute. In 1994, you founded and became director of the UC Davis Women's Cardiovascular Medicine Program, which is the first women's heart program in the nation. So how are our concerns about cardiac health different for women than they are for men? Yeah. And that's a great question. And one of the reasons that we began our program and what we don't realize is that women are not small men. You know, we're very different. Our biology is different. Our physiology is different. Our response to treatment is different. How we, you know, even just how risk factors affect us is different. We may have greater risk from them or lesser risk than a man. And so it's important to understand all of these gender-specific aspects of disease and incorporate them into our approach to heart care for women and how we manage women. And so I read at one point that most of the research on cardiac health had been done on men. And as you said, it doesn't really apply to women. So what's happening now? Has that shifted with your work? Yes. Well, I wouldn't say that it doesn't necessarily apply. What we're understanding is that there are a number of sex-specific and gender-specific aspects to disease and that we need to have that understanding. The flip side would be, let's say, imagine that all of the research on heart disease had been done only in women. There would be much that we would not know or understand about how the disease impacts men. So this is the opposite side of that. What we're understanding now is that by knowing those sex and gender-specific aspects of disease, we can much better approach women's heart care and deliver sex and gender-specific treatment and the heart association has very dedicated guidelines for managing heart disease and preventing heart disease in women that attend to these. As women, are there baseline tests we should be doing or specific conversations we should be having with our physicians about our heart health? I think the most important thing is to know your risk factors, know your numbers for your risk factors and to do that, you have to be seeing a health professional. For example, you can't guess your cholesterol or your blood sugar, right? That requires a blood test. So those are baseline tests. Those are baseline tests, right? And the heart association's message is to follow life's simple sevens. So they relate to a heart-healthy diet, being physically active, avoiding high-risk behaviors like smoking, and then managing risk factors like high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and hypertension. So if we can do those, we can greatly reduce our risk of heart disease, which is the number one killer for women, and we can increase our chances of being healthy as we age. I'm going to move over to Heather for a minute, because I've known Heather for a long time, and I know her to be one of the greatest advocates in our area for the work that you do, specific to your program, and for women in general. So welcome, Heather. Thank you. Thank you, Heather. It's great to be here. We last participated together in the Friday Heart About, the second Friday Heart About that was heart-themed for February and Valentine's Day, and we had a great time at the wardrobe helping spread awareness about women's heart health. What motivates you to, I know you're busy, so what motivates you to put this level of energy into this work? Well, I love fashion, color, and supporting socially conscious causes that support women, and so this actually evolved over a number of years in terms of the relationship I now have with women's heart health program. But I would say, besides that, I've been active since 2001 when I raised money for Rawa right after 9-11, just to give you a little background of my activism. And then I've also raised money for serotonin surge, Project Pink, and I've helped teach classes on the power of color, style, and adornment to cancer survivors. And so I would say that again, blending my love for clothing and fashion and how it can actually be used as a tool for empowerment, for healing, and for raising money for great causes has probably led me to this. And again, our paths have crossed just in dressing you for your annual events and beautiful red dresses. Oh, that's how it happened. I should have known. There's a fashion link. Yes, always, always. So you've been in the downtown for, I believe, celebrating your 29th anniversary, so congratulations on that. Thank you. And during that time, a lot of people have passed through your doors, your mailing list. What has been your response to learning about women's heart health been like as you've done this work? Yeah. So I have a newsletter called Fashion for Thought that goes out to 2,000 people for over the last 10 years. And I think that they're all on the sidelines, really cheerleading my efforts and this program in particular. And the red dresses that we brought to downtown Davis recently was probably the most impactful way to actually say things visually with stories that the UC Davis design students created behind the dresses. And then there's a beautiful book, too, with the red dresses. Did you get a lot of response about those red dresses? Do you have a lot of people commenting on that? A lot of response. And we've discovered that even men really want to play a part in wearing red, especially for National Wear Red Day, the first Friday in February. And I think it just really opened the door to a greater awareness in having the dresses downtown. I'm so grateful that we were able to put that together with the help of a number of people, curator, Adele over at the university as well as the Broman company that helped put us together and making the vacancies, studios for red dresses. Right. How does the work, and I want to mention to you that in addition to founding this institute at UC Davis, you also teach your professor, your practicing cardiologist, you have a lot on your plate. Right. Research. Yeah, research. Community engagement. Over and above. How does the work that you're doing through UC Davis, do you form connections with, for example, the American Heart Association or other organizations? I know your focus is a little more specific, but just wondering how that plays out. Yeah, and that's very important. You know, you can't just be in your office or in your clinic just doing your thing. It's very important to help educate the public, and in this case, women specifically, and their immediate communities, and that oftentimes is their network about the importance of heart disease as a leading killer for women and adopting heart healthy lifestyles and the fact that it's primarily a preventable disease. We estimate that 80 to 90 percent of heart disease is preventable. We don't have any other disease that has that kind of prevention rate. And so for me personally, it's very important that community engagement aspect is very important because this is one of the ways that we not only involve the community in what we're doing and have them be subjects of our research so that we can test preventive interventions in community settings so that we can empower communities to become more heart healthy and find ways to do that within their communities that they serve, but also a way for us to engage communities and the broad community really in our education efforts and in our philanthropy, our needs for philanthropy so that we can do more to prevent women from dying from heart disease. My connection with Heather is really an outspread of exactly that kind of work and engagement and she has been absolutely outstanding in helping us to educate our local Davis community. And also the work that she mentioned with the design students on the UC Davis undergraduate campus where we're trying to bring the heart health message to younger women who feel that they're completely immune. And one way to do that is to use the national symbol which is the red dress and having the students bring their own heart health inspiration, their life experience through their family stories and oftentimes their own personal stories of heart diseases, children for example, into the red dress and really making it a very personal message. So symbols can be so powerful and that kind of outreach is also incredibly powerful. Heather, did you want to add anything else? I don't know if there are upcoming events or anything you want to talk about? Well, before that I actually wanted to mention that really why I'm sitting here is because when I was given the heart champion award. In 2015, I forgot to mention that. In 2015, I learned at the heart health forum some statistics that just blew my mind basically that 4% of the national institute of health budget goes to cardiovascular disease research and that only 4% of the cardiovascular disease for American health association's money goes to women. That's right. So I did write that down and wanted to mention that because that is actually what is truly motivating me today is those numbers don't work for me. I think Heather's point is very important that we think that for example a disease that's a national killer for not just women but also men would therefore receive the most treatment, the most dollars, the most attention. But it's an assumption. Yes, yet we know that less than half of women are aware that heart disease is even their leading killer. So if you don't know that, you can't really adopt heart healthy behaviors because perhaps you lack the motivation or the knowledge to know that it's important to start that early. So we are out of time, unbelievably. Where can we get more information on your website? We can go to the website of the UC Davis women's cardiovascular medicine program, the National Institutes of Health Wear Red Campaign, and also the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women campaign, and the Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health. So lots of resources out there. Well, thank you both for joining me here today in the studio, and thank you for the important work you're doing. And thank you so much for helping us to raise awareness. It's my pleasure. Thanks for tuning in. You've been watching in the studio here at Davis Media Access. We've got a lot of information today, so ladies, take care of your health, take care of your hearts, and be well. You can catch the show on DCTV channel 15 on Comcast Davis and find it online at DCTV.Davismedia.org. Thanks.