Cardiologist Telling Women How To Love Their Hearts

KINGSPORT, Tenn. –– Cardiologist Freddie Williams, a Gate City native, came home last month – after 14 years of medical school at Harvard, Duke and the University of Virginia – to tell area women how to love their hearts.
That’s the calling card of Go Red for Women, a national movement of half a million women committed to bringing the scourge of heart disease, the No. 1 killer of women, to the spotlight.
Wellmont Health System partnered with the National Heart Association to kick off the program Tuesday in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, with Williams at the helm.
“I understand the culture here,” she said, wearing the badge of the initiative – a little red dress – pinned to her left lapel. “We are somewhat reserved, a little passive, and I hope to empower people to do more, to take charge of their own health.”
Williams said she knew all along that she wanted to return to the Tri-Cities, which she described as medically “underserved.”
She hopes that the program, which will include a National Wear Red Day in February and a spring luncheon, will spread the word that heart disease is a largely preventable ailment.
“Research has shown 80 percent of cardiac events in women could be prevented,” Williams said.  The risk factors for heart disease include smoking, family history, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and obesity. “Everyone sees heart disease as a man’s disease,” said Dale Sargent, chief medical officer at Wellmont, who wore a matching red dress on his left lapel during the afternoon news conference. “But it actually kills more women than all cancers. Women are often so busy taking care of everyone else, that they ignore their own health.”
Sargent called heart disease a lifestyle disease, and one that is especially problematic in this region because of the prevalence of smoking and obesity, a general lack of regular exercise and limited access to regular health care.
Heart disease, lung problems and diabetes plague the Appalachian region of the country, he said.
Nationally, the Go Red movement began in 2003 as a mouthpiece of the often overlooked dangers of heart problems among women. The program claims that since joining Go Red, more than 40 percent of participants have lost weight, more than half have exercised more and checked their cholesterol levels and 60 percent have changed their diets.
Officials with Wellmont, which is based in Kingsport, Tenn., and owns and operates Bristol Regional Medical Center and other area hospitals, said screenings and preventive education will be included in events.
Sargent said he hopes Go Red can ride along on the coattails of breast cancer awareness, with their little red dress becoming as recognizable as the pink ribbon. 
“If you look at the absolute numbers, heart disease dwarfs the number of women killed by breast cancer,” Sargent said. “We hope to make women recognize that chest pain is not always indigestion.”
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