Women's Cardiovascular Health and Cardiac Rehabilitation: a Priority-setting Partnership

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of preventable deaths in Canadian women. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is a risk reduction program that can enhance and maintain cardiovascular health through individualized programming. Participation can reduce future events by up to 50%. However, women are less likely to access CR than men. A collaborative research agenda is needed to address women's priorities for CR, incorporating the input of people with lived and living experience (PWLLE), whose needs are often left unmet. The objective of this study was to engage PWLLE of CVD and clinicians in Canada to identify and prioritize research questions about CR for women.

James Lind Alliance priority setting partnership was conducted. An initial survey collected questions about women's CR from PWLLE and clinicians. In a second survey, PWLLE and clinicians shortlisted the questions. The questions were prioritized at in-person workshop.

The first survey collected 1347 questions from 172 respondents: 74.3% women with lived experience of cardiovascular condition(s) and/or procedure(s), 10.5% family, friends, caregivers, and 23.4% clinicians. Out-of-scope submissions were removed. The remaining 715 were grouped and summarized, resulting in 52 summary questions. There were 250 responses to the second survey, which was used to create a shortlist of 25 questions. At the workshop, PWLLE and clinicians (n = 22) identified the top 10 priorities namely, individualization; women-only CR; follow-up; referral criteria; education; optimization; nutritional counselling; rural access; and exercise safety/progression.

These priorities were established through PWLLE-clinician consensus and provide a framework for future CR research in women.