WomenHeart Champions are the backbone of the movement for equitable women’s heart health. Their influence extends far beyond personal stories; they serve as educators, policy advocates, community mobilizers, and leaders who shape not only the narrative but the actual systems that determine outcomes for women with heart disease.
While researchers may publish findings and clinicians may provide care, it is the Champions who translate science into stories, statistics into urgency, and lived experience into action. This blog explores how Champions lead the way in advocacy, at the WomenHeart Summit, during Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill, and throughout the year in communities nationwide.
What Makes a Champion?
WomenHeart Champions are women living with heart disease, but they refuse to let their diagnoses define them. Instead, they choose to use their experiences to improve the pathways for others entering the system behind them.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the U.S., accounting for about 1 in every 5 female deaths. Yet women’s symptoms are still underrecognized, and women are more likely to be misdiagnosed or undertreated compared with men. For example, research shows that women are less likely to receive guideline‑recommended therapies, including diagnostic testing and pharmacologic treatment for coronary artery disease.
In this context, Champions serve three key advocacy roles:
- Educating peers and professionals
- Amplifying patient perspectives
- Driving policy change
Advocacy in Action: The WomenHeart Summit
The annual WomenHeart Summit is where advocacy comes alive in real time. It’s not just a conference; it’s a movement engine that brings together patients, clinicians, researchers, policymakers, and community advocates.
At the heart of the Summit is the Heart Health IS Women’s Health Forum, a convening that centers the lived experience. Champions lead panels, share firsthand accounts of navigating the healthcare system, and offer actionable insights that clinicians and advocates can use to transform care.
Consider the impact of having a woman stand before a room of clinicians and recount how her symptoms were dismissed for months, only to later reveal serious cardiovascular disease. This isn’t an anecdote; it’s data lived in the body. Studies have repeatedly shown that women presenting with heart attack symptoms are more likely to be told their pain is non‑cardiac compared to men.
When Champions share these stories, they are supplying not just emotion, but lived-experience, and healthcare providers listen.
Champions also engage in workshops that build skills for advocacy beyond the Summit, creating ripple effects as these leaders return to their communities.
Advocacy Day: Meeting Lawmakers Where It Matters
One of the most impactful avenues of Champion leadership is Advocacy Day, when Champions travel to Capitol Hill to speak directly with lawmakers about policy issues that affect women’s heart health.
Why is this important? Because policy shapes access to care, research funding, insurance coverage, and clinical priorities. For example:
- Coverage for diagnostic testing and cardiac rehabilitation varies by plan and state.
- Funding for women’s health research, like the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health, is subject to federal appropriations.
- Clinical trial representation remains uneven; women, particularly women of color, have historically been underrepresented in cardiovascular research.
Champions bring faces and voices to these abstract issues. Instead of talking only about statistics, lawmakers hear stories and stories lead to action.
These conversations would not happen without Champions willing to speak up.
Beyond the Hill: Community Leadership
Champions don’t stop at national advocacy. Throughout the year, they:
- Lead local and national support groups
- Offer community education sessions
- Represent WomenHeart at health fairs, senior expos, and professional meetings
- Mentor new Champions
- Share resources like Red Bags of Courage and Heart Scarves
This grassroots work keeps momentum alive between national events.
One tangible example is community talks that bridge gaps in local care, simple conversations that help women recognize symptoms, ask better questions of providers, and seek appropriate testing.
How You Can Support Champion Advocacy
Champions are powerful, but they are strongest with a community behind them. Here’s how you can help:
- Donate — Your support funds Champion training, resource development, and advocacy infrastructure.
- Visit Our Action Center — Participate in campaign efforts by contacting policymakers and supporting critical legislation.
- Share Champion Stories — Use your platform to amplify voices that elevate awareness and equity.
- Educate Your Circle — Spread evidence‑based information on symptoms, risk factors, and heart disease prevention.
- Celebrate Her Heart, Her History — Highlight the contributions of Black women whose leadership has shifted conversations and outcomes.
- Become a Champion — If you are a dynamic and driven woman living with heart disease, join the WomenHeart Champions as a voice for change.
Advocacy Isn’t a Moment. It’s a Movement.
WomenHeart Champions remind us that advocacy is not reserved for experts. It starts with lived experience, grows through community, and changes systems over time. When women speak up about their health, policymakers listen. When communities support them, outcomes improve. When stories are shared, stigma dissolves.
In the journey for heart health equity, Champions lead not just from the podium, but from the heart itself.
