AstraZeneca HealthCare Foundation awards $197,634 grant to Saint Agnes Hospital Foundation

The AstraZeneca HealthCare Foundation’s Connections for Cardiovascular Health^SM program today announced a grant of $197,634 to Saint Agnes Hospital Foundation to support its Heart-to-Heart initiative. This is the second consecutive year in which the Saint Agnes Hospital Foundation has received a grant from the AstraZeneca HealthCare Foundation, totaling $442,089.

Heart-to-Heart aims to identify and assess underserved, low-income African-American women at high risk for cardiovascular disease and provide a community-based church intervention program that includes nutrition, physical activity and healthy lifestyle education to reduce their risk for heart disease.

“With Southwest Baltimore having some of the highest rates of premature death due to cardiovascular disease, Saint Agnes Hospital has made it a priority to not only educate and raise awareness about heart disease but also to help prevent and cure it,” said Lucy Ferko, senior vice president of the Clinical Institute and Ambulatory Services, Saint Agnes Hospital. “The Heart-to-Heart program allows us to bring the services and screenings of our Women’s Heart Center, the only program of its kind in Maryland, to the community. After only one year, the Heart-to-Heart program has reached hundreds of women, successfully improving the cardiovascular health of participants -- and we look forward to improving even more lives this year.”

As a result of previous funding from the AstraZeneca HealthCare Foundation, Heart-to-Heart staff completed 276 one-on-one tailored heart risk assessments for African-American women living in communities with some of the most severe healthcare disparities in the state of Maryland. At the beginning of the program, 80 percent of the participants had a waist circumference (an indicator of cardiovascular risk in women) that placed them in the At Risk category. After four months of program participation, the percentage of participants in the At Risk category decreased to 65 percent.

“Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, and organizations like Saint Agnes Hospital Foundation are creating innovative programs to help prevent and decrease the associated risks with this devastating disease,” said James W. Blasetto, M.D., MPH, FACC, chairman of the AstraZeneca HealthCare Foundation. “We are grateful to Saint Agnes Hospital Foundation for its commitment to improving heart health in their community.”

The Connections for Cardiovascular Health^SM program annually awards grants of $150,000 or more to U.S.-based nonprofit organizations dedicated to improving cardiovascular health in local communities. This year, the program awarded nearly $3.7 million in grants to 19 organizations. More than $14 million in grants have been awarded through the program since its inception in 2010.

Organizations can learn more and apply online for a Connections for Cardiovascular Health^SMgrant at www.astrazeneca-us.com/foundation. Applications must be submitted online no later than 5 p.m. EST on Feb. 27, 2014.