Ottawa – Women experience distinct heart disease and stroke symptoms and risk factors that remain under-researched and misunderstood. With these new investments, we’re closing the gap and moving toward a future where all women receive the high-quality heart and brain health care they need.
Mark Holland, Minister of Health, announced that the Government of Canada and partners, Heart & Stroke and Brain Canada, are investing $10M to establish two new national research networks for women’s heart and brain health.
The networks will be led by Dr Rohan D’Souza at McMaster University, whose team will create a Canada-wide collaboration aimed at reducing deaths and serious illness from heart conditions during and between pregnancies, and Dr. Amy Yu at the Sunnybrook Research Institute whose team will work on improving evaluation, diagnosis, and outcomes of stroke in women across Canada.
Each network will receive $5M in funding over five years to better understand women’s risk factors for heart and brain conditions and to improve the diagnosis and treatment of conditions more common among women or that are less well studied.
“We know that women can have conditions that affect them disproportionately or differently, like heart disease and stroke, but these conditions remain under-researched and misunderstood. By investing in these research networks, we can fill persistent knowledge, practice and policy gaps in women’s heart and stroke health – so women across Canada can get the care they need.” – Mark Holland, Minister of Health