To Improve Cardiac Outcomes for Women, Increase Their Representation

The Dose

Forty-four percent of U.S. women now live with some form of heart disease, a number that’s been climbing steadily over the past decade. And although it’s the leading cause of death among women, just 14 percent of cardiologists are women.

This week on The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell interviews cardiologist Martha Gulati, M.D., associate director of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles and president of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology. She talks about women’s historical exclusion from clinical trials for heart disease, why sex and gender matter in the search for better treatments, and the persistent gaps in women’s cardiology care and research — especially related to women of color.

“In cardiology, we are still thinking about men more than we are about women,” Dr. Gulati says.