Medtronic has teamed up with Star Jones to get women talking about heart health. The TV personality is lending her star power to a campaign designed to encourage people to speak to their mothers about the signs and symptoms of heart disease.
Heart disease was the leading cause of death in women in the U.S. in 2021, but a survey sponsored by Medtronic, a medtech company that sells cardiovascular devices, suggests the risks are rarely discussed. The survey captured the views of 1,000 U.S. women 30 to 50 years old who have a living mother and living child, with the results released just ahead of Mother’s Day this year, amid May’s Women’s Health Month.
Medtronic found 45% of women were more likely to discuss sensitive topics such as politics, money or relationships with their mother or grandmother before discussing family heart health history. More than half of the women said they have never discussed heart health with their mother.
Women are concerned about what will happen to their mothers as they age, with 53% voicing worries that their matriarchs will ignore symptoms, but 56% have never discussed heart health with other women in their families. Only around one-third of women with a family history of heart disease said they have asked their doctors to assess their cardiovascular risk.
With those results in hand, Medtronic is asking women to pledge to talk to their mothers about heart health through its “Letter to My Mother” campaign, which also launched last week. The company said it will commemorate every pledge made with “a donation to a cause that advances women's heart health.”
The campaign website also offers a form that women can complete to get information from Medtronic about heart valve failure and high blood pressure. Jones is adding her voice to the cause, inspired by her own experience with heart disease.
“I come from a family with a long history of heart disease, yet this was rarely a topic we talked about,” she said in a statement. “If only I had acknowledged my risk for heart disease earlier, I could’ve potentially addressed my concerns with my cardiologist sooner before it led to needing open-heart surgery. That is why I am speaking out now to get all women talking about this disease and how addressing symptoms could save their life—like it did for me.”
The focus on women’s heart health aligns with an opportunity Medtronic is pursuing in the transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) market. Last year, the company published data from a head-to-head trial that found its TAVR device has advantages over Edwards Lifesciences’ rival product in people with a small aortic annulus.
Almost 90% of the participants in the study were women. Those results were released shortly after Medtronic commissioned another survey that found many at-risk women aren’t being screened for aortic stenosis, also known as heart valve disease, possibly due to a lack of awareness around the risk factors and symptoms of the condition.