In order to mark February as the American Heart Month, Cary Medical Center will join thousands of Americans nationwide in celebrating National Wear Red Day on Friday,Feb. 1,by encouraging their employees to wear red and educate their community members about heart disease awareness.
The staff at Cary are expected to wear red items of clothing to symbolize the need for people to become conscious of women’s heart health.
According to Stacy Boucher, Project Manager The Power of Prevention, A Healthy Maine Partnership, “National Wear Red Day is a great opportunity to reach out to women in our community and alert them to their personal risk factors for heart disease. By wearing red and participating in Cary Medical Center’s promotion of heart health on Feb. 1, we can all show our support for women and heart disease awareness.”
Cary Medical Center’s National Wear Red Day activities are in partnership with The Heart Truth, a national awareness campaign for women about heart disease sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Heart Truth launched the Red Dress as the national symbol for women and heart disease in 2002 to deliver an urgent wakeup call to American women. A simple Red Dress works as a visual red alert to get the message heard loud and clear: “Heart Disease Doesn’t Care What You Wear—It’s the #1 Killer of Women.”
National Wear Red Day is an annual event held on the first Friday in February. The first observance, in February 2004, was announced at the White House.
For more information about National Wear Red Day activities and The Heart Truth, including downloadable materials on women and heart disease and ordering information for the Red Dress Pin, please visit www.hearttruth.gov or call the NHLBI Health Information Center at 301-592-8573.
