Grant: Operating Grant

The Canadian Heart Health Strategy and Action Plan and the Heart & Stroke Foundation Annual Report on Canadians' Health state that women's heart health is a key national priority that needs to be addressed to reduce care inequities for women. Given the costs of treating heart disease and screening for it, new and innovative ways to identify women who should undergo screening are critical to achieve this goal. A significant number of heart attacks occur in in women in the absence of major heart disease risk factors (e.g. age, high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, cholesterol or lipid problems) and many women with these risk factors do not experience heart attacks which highlights the need for assessment of new markers of heart disease risk and at different times during a woman's lifetime. Pregnancy and the period after delivery are often one of the first times that women access the health care system on a regular basis and are seen by a trained health-care provider. Therefore, for the majority of Canadian women of reproductive age, pregnancy is a window of opportunity to improve their longterm health which has not previously been considered. The 2011 Update for the American Heart Association's Evidence-Based Guidelines for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease in Women now identifies pre-eclampsia as relevant in the determination of a woman's cardiovascular risk; "Future research should evaluate the potential for exposures, events, or interaction with the medical system during periods of potential vulnerability across a woman's lifespan such as menarche, pregnancy, and menopause to identify women at risk and to determine the effectiveness of diagnostic and preventive interventions during these critical times". The Maternal Health Clinic which we set up to follow women with pre-eclampsia is internationally unique and affords us a real opportunity to not only carry out screening but to establish new and innovative ways to screen and treat these women.