Looking back on her choice to become a cardiologist, Dr. Holly Andersen is refreshingly frank about her motivations.
"I was always interested in how the body worked, and when I became a medical student, the heart was clearly the most interesting," she said. "People come in here dying and we make them better. And anything you do for the heart that's good for you is good for the rest of you."
Dr. Andersen is an associate professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and the director of education and outreach at the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She came to Weill Cornell as an intern in 1989, and in those years of emergency interventions and nursing ailing hearts back from the brink of failure, Dr. Andersen had to adjust her philosophy on cardiac care.
"Physicians are really good at taking care of heart attacks — great at it, actually, but we aren't as good at preventing them," she said. "After putting out all those fires, we now have to think about keeping the fires from starting in the first place. What I love about cardiology is that heart disease is largely preventable."
February is American Heart Month, and in her role as director of education and outreach at the Perelman Heart Institute, Dr. Andersen is working overtime to increase cardiac health awareness, and not just to those who come to her office for an appointment. The Perelman Heart Institute opened in 2009, as a center dedicated to treatment and research, as well as focusing on becoming the national voice in prevention and awareness.
For Heart Month, the Institute has planned a month-long series of events and lectures, most of which will be held at the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute Education Center, on topics ranging from stroke prevention to heart attack signs and symptoms in women.
As part of its ongoing commitment to fighting heart disease before it even has a chance to strike, The Perelman Heart Institute employs a full-time nurse educator who teaches prevention and lifestyle choices to patients, and to the family and friends that visit them in the Hospital.
"We have a very captive audience, and what we are teaching them is how to not end up here," Dr. Andersen said.
The Institute also started the Perelman Mile for Hospital employees, an initiative to get staff to walk one mile every day on their lunch breaks.
In recent years, as heart disease has become the leading cause of death for women worldwide, Dr. Andersen has seen her role shift somewhat to educating women about the risks associated with heart disease.
A 2010 American Heart Association survey showed that only 53 percent of women who believe they are having a heart attack will call 911 for help.
"That means 47 percent of women actually believed they were having a heart attack but didn't call 911," Dr. Andersen said. "Heart disease is still viewed as a disease for men or old people."
The good news is that awareness is going up, through community outreach initiatives as well as doctors doing a better job of educating their patients. And awareness is what leads to better practices, which leads to lives saved.
"When you educate a woman, you educate a family," Dr. Andersen said. "Educating women may be our best tool toward improving society's health."
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