In a global world, global partnership in research and information exchange is essential; its effect is for all human beings’ benefit. This also refers to the extensive medical partnership Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer, in Israel, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles, have formed years ago. This partnership makes the entire world a healthier place to live, giving all of us the health we seek and deserve.
The medical profession prides itself with many women who are physicians and moms, and not necessarily in this order. In a luncheon held this week by Friends of Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer in Beverly Hills California, hosted by Myrtle Sitowitz, two prominent cardiologists - one American and one Israeli – both representing beauty and strength, faced a large crowd of women who wanted to know as much as possible about women’s cardiovascular deformities and their prevention methods.
C. [Cathleen] Noel Bairey Merz, MD ‘made’ in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, USA
C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, an extremely elegant woman, is a professor of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center who holds the Women’s Guild Endowed Chair in Women’s Health and is a Director of the Barbara Streisand Women’s Heart Center, the Linda Joy Pollin Women’s Heart Health Program, the Erika J Glazer Women’s Heart Research Initiative and the Preventative Cardiac Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute.
Recognized as an authority on the subject of heart disease and stress, Dr. Bairey Merz frequently appears in the media, among which is 60 Minutes, Dr. Oz, Good Morning America, NBC Dateline and 20/20.
Romana Herscovici MD ‘made’ in Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer, Israel
Dr. Romana Herscovici is Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer research fellow at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, working with the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at the Barbara Streisand Women’s Heart Center.
Born in Romania, Dr. Herscovici graduated medical school in Romania and then immigrated to Israel to begin internship at Sheba Medical Center where she is working till today. During her cardiology fellowship at Sheba, Dr. Herscovici discovered the growing case of women’s heart diseases by which she became intrigued. Her curiosity to know more about women’s cardiovascular illnesses brought Dr. Herscovici to do a two year fellowship in Cedars-Sinai, under the mentorship of Dr. C. Noel Bairey Merz. Upon her return to Israel in the coming summer, Dr. Herscovici will continue her work, focusing on the importance of women’s heart health at Sheba Medical Center.
Men and women differ in the way their heart works or fails
Evidence based medicine took long to acknowledge that women are not sub-population, they are not men, and are as important as men when it comes to treating diseases that affect mainly women.
Attention to women’s cardiovascular diseases began in the 1980s’ when the medical profession world began to acknowledge that the biological heart of woman and a man is different and men and women differentiate in their cardiovascular anomaly. At that time singer-actress and activist Barbara Streisand was approached; she made the pitch and due to her fundraising efforts the Barbara Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD Director, was established.
It is a fact today that heart diseases kill more women at early age and it is a leading medical problem while breast cancer cases dropped to 4% much because of research, what the women’s cardiovascular diseases critically need. In Israel the greatest killer of women after the age of 75 is heart diseases.
Radars are used to detect and find lost submarines. The medical profession learned to detect breast cancer; now it needs to find the easy and none evasive method to detect heart problems in women.
What we see from here, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center they see there, at Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer.
Israel is legging in treating women’s heart diseases.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a medical profession power-house. Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer is Israel’s medical profession power-house pride. Cooperation between these two medical centers can be seen as a global medical effort to make all women’s hearts healthier, to make a healthier world.
The method to tackle the cardiovascular field is four fold:
Science – know the scientific part of the issues at hand. That is extensive research.
Clinical – take the scientific information into practice.
Education – educate the public, the medical community and the public at large.
Policy – we all agree that if it is not the law and it is not regulated nothing will be accomplished. Passing a policy makes it available to the public.
The foreseeing future
Besides becoming friends and close working professionals the expertise of these two women physicians is going to enhance the fight for women’s healthier heart.
Upon her returning to Israel, Dr. Herscovici will be leading a new woman cardiovascular center at Sheba Medical Center.
Dr. Herscovici will work on the four components’ method from Sheba Medical Center in Israel and Dr. C. Noel Bairey Merz will continue her work from her center at Cedars-Sinai and the two, as one, will work to bring down the mortality of women from cardiovascular diseases.
Tips
High cholesterol count is considered a leading factor to heart diseases. Benecol is part of a healthy cholesterol-lowering daily diet for you and your family. And with Mediterranean diet you can cure much of high cholesterol count problem.
Join in this global efforts to reduce the number of cardiovascular diseases cases in women by first joining Friends of Sheba mission to Israel this coming June 11th-to-19th, 2018, and second, by giving your support to the Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer, Israel, its efforts will make our moms’ hearts healthier.