“Heart disease in women, across the spectrum of heart disease, has been understudied,” said Oversight Advisory Committee Chairperson Kristin Newby, M.D. “This network studied everything from heart failure in women who basically have normally functioning hearts — what we call heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, it's much more it’s much more common in women, very difficult to treat, few treatment options but particularly relevant to women — to diseases of pregnancy, which are unique to women and have numerous downstream health consequences from hypertension to delayed future cardiovascular disease; to coronary disease, which is the most common cause of of death in Americans overall but presents differently in women both at a symptom level and also at an anatomic level.”

"The Go Red for Women SFRN," she said, “really covered the waterfront of heart disease in women at a level of depth that I don’t think has been done to this point.

The varied, in-depth and innovative research conducted through the network is already being furthered across the country. Fellows and new research projects are building upon the collected data and using funding from not just the AHA but an array of nonprofit and government grants.

The Go Red SFRN is leading to revelations about biochemical markers for heart disease specific to women, who were previously understudied. This has prompted the implementation of more widespread blood pressure monitoring among new mothers in the weeks immediately following births — and beyond.

“There’s been a lot of output and a lot of potential projects from the data and the efforts funded by this grant,” Johns Hopkins University fellow Wendy Ying, M.D., said. “I foresee that the data we generated through these last few years can actually support more ideas for other fellows, not just me.”

One of the “most important” aspects of the Go Red SFRN, said OAC Chairperson Kristin Newby, MD, was that “trainees were getting exposed to the various aspects of basic, clinical and population research, and had the opportunity to cross collaborate — and that’s essential to building young people’s careers and creating future research networks and engagement.”