Minnesota's first lady, Mary Pawlenty, plans to visit Rochester on Friday to remind women to be alert to heart disease.
She'll visit Mayo Clinic as part of National Wear Red Day, an annual event designed to raise awareness that women in the U.S. are more likely to die of heart disease than from any other cause.
The campaign's local efforts are patterned after the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
The goal is to encourage women to wear red dresses on the same day in February and men to wear red in solidarity. This year, that day is Friday. Advocates want people to realize that heart disease kills women disproportionately, and awareness appears to be growing.
"The level of recognition of the red dress, of the fact that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, all those metrics have improved since the campaign started," said Dr. Sharonne Hayes, a cardiologist and director of the Women's Heart Clinic at Mayo Clinic in Rochester.
A public walk to encourage exercise, one way to counteract the effects of heart disease, is scheduled to leave the Government Center at noon. It will be led by Mayor Ardell Brede.
The walk ends at Geffen Auditorium in the subway of the Gonda Building, 100 Third Ave. S.W.
Also at noon, Mayo employees will have their own walk, which will leave the Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center and converge with the other walkers at Geffen, Hayes said.
"My mother had some heart surgery, and the surgeon said, 'Ardell, you've got some good genes because she's got a tough heart,'" Brede said. His mother lived to 92, but not all women with heart disease are as fortunate.
"Many of us have members of the family that have had various heart conditions, and so it's not something that's totally foreign," Brede said. "But a lot of times we don't want to either admit it or pay attention to those kind of things."
Hayes said the walks are part of an effort to encourage healthier lifestyles that focus on making simple daily choices.
"We're all presented with simple choices every day, whether we take the stairs or take the elevator, whether we take the apple or the bag of chips, whether we smoke another cigarette," Hayes said.
Making the healthier choice on a daily basis can improve health and decrease the risks of heart disease, she said.
Pawlenty is scheduled to speak at Geffen at 12:20 p.m., Hayes said.
There will be a drawing for a Swarovski crystal red-dress pin; the winner must be present to win.
"After that, everybody who's wearing red will join together and we're going to have a picture taken of the whole group," Hayes said.
Reporter Jeff Hansel covers health for the Post-Bulletin. To see more of the Post-Bulletin, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.postbulletin.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.