In honor of mother’s day, and to inform mothers across the nation, we salute Sister to Sister: The Women’s Heart Foundation and their newly launched effort, Screen 4. Screen 4 is an innovative, grass-roots campaign which encourages women to get screened for heart disease. Because 1 in 4 women dies of heart disease, the program is designed to screen women in groups of 4.
Sister to Sister is the nation’s only large-scale provider of free heart health screenings. The nonprofit foundation is dedicated to preventing heart disease—the #1 killer of women. Sister to Sister hosts annual, free Women’s Heart Health Fairs in select U.S. cities, engages in year-round education and research initiatives, and provides an online destination for women seeking heart health information, personalized risk management tools, and community support on its website.
Screen 4 is a free program that began on May 1st to coincide with Mother’s Day and National Women’s Healthcare Month. Utilizing a “buddy” system, Screen 4 calls for women to gather into teams to work together to combat and prevent heart disease. The program involves three easy steps: get together, get screened, and get going with a plan to address risk factors. Sister to Sister’s Screen 4 guides teams via easy tools on its website.
Once a woman signs up online and recruits her team, the site helps them identify a location near their home where they can get screened. Following the screening, team members punch in their results and, based on their numbers, are provided with a heart-health program they can easily implement on their own. Screen 4 participants will also have free access to the online community and an e-newsletter series that will deliver essential information directly to them.
As an incentive for campaign participation, Sister to Sister will donate one free screening for every team of four that signs up (up to 1,000), enabling that many more women to take control of their heart health. The screening personalizes the risk factors by providing women with five important numbers:
Blood glucose—because diabetes doubles a woman’s risk for heart attack and stroke.
cholesterol—because 1 in 4 women has high cholesterol.
Blood pressure—because 1 in 4 women has hypertension.
BMI and waist circumference—because 1 in 4 women is obese.
Women can be screened by their personal care providers or by finding their local screening center by using the online Screening Locator tool on www.sistertosister.org. Purchasing a do-it-yourself screening kit at a special discounted rate for Screen 4 participants is a third option.
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