WomenHeart is a national patient-centered organization that provides support, education and advocacy for women living with heart disease. The mission of WomenHeart is to improve both the quality of life and the quality of healthcare available for women living with heart disease, and to advocate for their benefit. Through our advocacy efforts, we strive to make prevention, early detection, accurate diagnosis and proper treatment of heart disease available to all women, without regard for their race, age, ethnic background, health insurance or socioeconomic status.

We are committed to serving the needs of women with diagnosed heart disease. When heart disease prevention and treatment are delayed, countless years of productive womenpower are lost. We believe that access to health care, education and training enables women to take charge of their heart health and advocate for other women. Since heart disease is the #1 killer of women, improving the heart health of women should be a priority in health care reform.

Strong, healthy and vibrant women care for their families, are productive in the workplace and donate countless volunteer hours to their schools and communities. Healthy women can change the world, and greatly influence the lives of their neighbors, colleagues and families. WomenHeart believes that health care policies should recognize and value the enormous contribution women are making to help America prosper.

The WomenHeart Public Policy Agenda has been developed for the 110th Congress. These policies will form the core of our legislative agenda and will serve as a guide for our volunteers as they meet with their senators and representatives. The Public Policy Agenda will be updated for the next Congress and the new administration in January 2009.

Prevention and Early Detection

WomenHeart is committed to advocating for funds and programs and resources that enable women to practice prevention and ensure timely detection of heart disease. We advocate for policies that will:

• Increase funds for public health campaigns to educate all women about their risk of heart disease, the signs and symptoms of heart disease, the need for treatment, and ways to prevent heart disease and improve the quality of life for women living with heart disease.
• Make prevention programs that screen for diabetes, elevated cholesterol and high blood pressure, and also promote physical activity and weight management more widely accessible to women.
• Increase funds for public health campaigns to promote healthy lifestyles- heart-healthy diet, physical activity and smoking cessation.
• Target education and public awareness efforts toward for minority women to address the increased risk of death from heart disease among African-American, Hispanic and Native American women.
• Expand and support the federal and state governments’ roles in diabetes prevention and nutrition education programs targeted to women and girls, with particular emphasis on preventing obesity by controlling caloric intake. 
• Increase funds to support smoking prevention and cessation programs, and assign the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) full authority over the manufacture, sale, distribution, labeling, and promotion of tobacco.
• Cease governmental financial support for the growth, promotion and marketing of tobacco, and create programs to help farmers and tobacco-growing areas develop economic alternatives to tobacco.

Accurate Diagnosis

Accurate diagnosis is the cornerstone of excellent care. WomenHeart pledges to support funding for all programs and procedures that contribute to and assist with accurate diagnosis and advocate for prices that will:

• Assure that significant funding is appropriated for accounts and programs that address the diagnosis, medical care, and treatment of cardiovascular disease in women. 
• Increase funds for research in heart disease diagnosis and treatment in women, including sex specific trials for medicines and medical devices, and research in how comparative effectiveness and evidence based medicine can be utilized in the best interests of the patient.
• Monitor the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for enforcement of the requirement to stratify data by race, ethnicity and gender for drug and device development and approval processes and for results analysis and reporting.
• Increase recruitment, enrollment and retention of women subjects for research, and research trial design

Proper treatment and quality healthcare

Ensuring that all women have access to proper treatment that is available and affordable is central to the WomenHeart mission. WomenHeart will work to achieve this goal by advocating for policies that will:

• Extend health insurance coverage to the nearly 17 million uninsured women, without regard to existing or pre-existing conditions, so all women have the opportunity to seek medical treatment when they need it.
• Improve coverage for all insured patients, including Medicare Part D and the Low Income Subsidy (LIS), and provide adequate reimbursement for providers in the Medicare/Medicaid programs to encourage participation and the provision of quality care.
• Eliminate unnecessary and complex barriers to quality treatments, such as prior approval and ‘fail first’ requirements, increased co-pays and restricted drug formularies.
• Enhance benefit packages for all patients to include preventive care, emergency care, appropriate diagnostic procedures, risk modification programs and heart rehabilitative services, and as it develops, personalized health care, so that all women have access to the right treatment for them, with high quality and value for care.
• Ensure that all women have access to the full range of cardiovascular medicines and medical devices available on the market that are appropriate for their condition.
• Improve quality of care for women by collecting and reporting evidence based data for studies, clinical trials, devices, medications and treatments by sex.
• Ensure that treatment can be monitored through the ongoing development of electronic medical records, and personal health records, with utmost care to guard confidentiality and privacy.
• Incorporate specific recommendations for women into practice guidelines when data are available and encourage health care providers to apply proven sex-based differences for all aspects of clinical practice.