Cardiologist Barbara Roberts to speak at URI, March 18
KINGSTON, R.I. –March 1, 2010—More than 40 percent of women will die of cardiovascular disease. While this statistic surprises most people, unfortunately it surprises many doctors as well.
As Rhode Island’s first female cardiologist, Barbara Roberts has dedicated her career to improving the cardiovascular health of women. She is the director of the Women’s Cardiac Center at The Miriam Hospital and an associate clinical professor of medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University. In addition, she has maintained a private practice since arriving in Providence in 1977.
She will speak at the University of Rhode Island March 18 at 7 p.m. Her talk, “”Gender-Specific Aspects of Heart Disease: What All Women Need to Know” will be held in Swan Hall, 60 Upper College Road, Kingston. Her presentation is geared toward women of college age and older as well as all those who love them. Her visit is the URI Women’s Studies annual Schweers Lecture on Women’s Health. It is co-sponsored by the URI College of Nursing and the dean of URI’s College of Arts and Sciences. This talk will be livecast on URI Live! (www.uri.edu/news/urilive).
The cardiologist will discuss the signs and symptoms of heart disease, how heart disease symptoms may differ between men and women, and how women have been diagnosed and treated differently from men. She will provide steps that can be taken to prevent heart disease.
Worldwide more than 8 million women die annually from heart disease or stroke, almost 18 times the number who die of breast cancer and six times more than the number who die of HIV/AIDS.
“There is much that women can and should do to lower their risk of heart disease and live longer, healthier lives, “ says Roberts who is the author of How to Keep From Breaking Your Heart: What Every Woman Needs to Know About Cardiovascular Disease.
“I wrote my book basically to instruct women about what the heart does normally, what are the symptoms when things go wrong and how you can prevent heart disease,” Dr. Roberts says.
To address the international epidemic of heart disease in women, the doctor is also involved in ProCOR, an e-mail and Internet-based organization committed to global cardiovascular health, especially women’s heart health in the developing world.