Women and heart disease: knowledge, worry, and motivation

Heart disease remains the number one killer of women. Epidemiologic data show a persisting failure to raise the perception of heart disease risk in women despite massive campaigning efforts. We sought to describe the psychosocial barriers preventing women from recognizing this risk and actively preventing heart disease.

We obtained access to data from the 534 participants of a random sampling of U.S. women from a commercial telephone survey commissioned by a nonprofit advocacy organization, the Society for Women's Health Research, in 2007. The survey was designed to test women's general knowledge of cardiac risk factors. We grouped the questions into five psychosocial/knowledge categories: worry, motivation, personal cardiovascular risk awareness, general cardiac knowledge, and general cholesterol knowledge. Univariate and multivariate modeling of the relationships of these psychosocial/knowledge categories-along with five baseline demographic variables, age, ethnicity, income, education, and geographic location-to the motivation score were performed.

Univariate modeling revealed that higher motivation scores were associated with greater personal risk factor knowledge/awareness and more worry about cardiovascular disease (CVD) (R(2)=0.43, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.35-0.50 for both scores). Younger age, Asian ethnicity, and lower education levels were associated with less motivation to modify their cardiovascular risk factors (p<0.05). Multivariate modeling revealed a persistent significant relationship of motivation to worry, personal cardiovascular risk awareness, age <45 years, and nonblack, non-Hispanic ethnic minority (p<0.001).

Worried and knowledgeable women over the age of 45 are motivated to modify their risk factors. Heart health education targeting the subgroups of less motivated women may be of benefit to raise awareness of heart disease.