Dayton campaign pushes women’s heart health as hypertension risk climbs toward 2050
By 2050, almost 60% of women could have high blood pressure, a projection that changes the frame of women’s cardiovascular prevention from abstract concern to a concrete public health deadline. Cardiovascular disease remains the No. 1 killer of women, and the American Heart Association is using that reality to press harder on awareness, screening, and earlier action across the lifespan.
The Dayton effort is being led locally by Katy Jacomet, a benefits consultant with USI Insurance Services, who will serve as the 2027 chair for Dayton’s Go Red for Women movement. Her role places a local face on a national campaign built around a simple clinical idea: women’s risk is often underestimated until disease is established, and prevention loses leverage once vascular injury has accumulated.
Women’s heart disease has long been filtered through outdated assumptions. Symptoms may be dismissed, risk factors may not be discussed early enough, and care pathways can fail to reflect the fact that cardiovascular disease behaves differently across stages of life, including pregnancy, midlife hormonal change, and older age. The campaign’s emphasis on “every stage of life” reflects that reality without softening it. Blood pressure, lipid burden, diabetes, obesity, tobacco exposure, and access to care all shape long-term cardiovascular risk, and the accumulation is rarely visible in a single appointment.
“Women’s health is not a hot topic or buzzword. It deserves attention, funding and research to save the lives of mothers, sisters and friends,” Jacomet said. She described Go Red for Women as a call to action for hearts, futures, and the women who matter most to participants and families.
The public health backdrop is stark. An American Heart Association survey found that less than half of women are aware of their unique risk. In clinical terms, low awareness is not just an information gap; it is a missed opportunity to detect hypertension, reinforce lifestyle change, and intervene before end-organ damage takes hold. Silent blood pressure elevation is particularly dangerous because it can progress for years without symptoms while increasing stroke, heart failure, kidney disease, and coronary risk.
Awareness gaps still shape preventable risk
The Dayton program is meant to close some of those gaps by pairing education with visible community support. Shayna Thomas, development director with the American Heart Association in Dayton, said Jacomet is leading a community and sisterhood that can create a ripple of change. The event’s message is direct: women should slow down long enough to prioritize their own heart health, a task that often gets pushed aside by caregiving, work, and family demands.
The structure of the Go Red for Women movement matters because cardiovascular prevention is not solved by a single lecture or screening event. Sustained behavior change depends on repetition, social reinforcement, and a setting where risk is discussed without stigma. Women who know their numbers are more likely to engage with treatment, but knowledge alone is not enough if blood pressure checks, follow-up, medication access, and counseling remain inconsistent.
Dayton luncheon turns prevention into a local clinical message
The Dayton Go Red for Women Luncheon is scheduled for the Marriott at the University of Dayton and will include survivor stories, lunch, and an interactive pop-up lounge where guests can connect and take action for their heart health. Those elements are not merely ceremonial. Survivor narratives can reframe cardiovascular disease as something survivable but not benign, while on-site engagement can lower the barrier to screening and conversation.
For public health teams, the larger challenge is translating projections into behavior before the projected burden becomes fixed. The 2050 estimate that nearly 60% of women could have high blood pressure is not a distant abstraction; it suggests a future in which hypertension becomes even more common unless prevention improves at scale. Because blood pressure is both common and modifiable, it remains one of the clearest entry points for reducing downstream cardiovascular events in women.
The campaign also sits inside a broader American Heart Association message that heart and brain health are linked. Vascular injury does not stop at the coronary arteries, and hypertension contributes to stroke risk as well as cardiac disease. A prevention strategy that treats women’s cardiovascular health as a lifelong issue can better account for those overlapping outcomes.
For Dayton, the immediate clinical meaning is practical: make risk visible, raise awareness before symptoms appear, and reach women who may not otherwise see themselves as at risk. The event’s contact information and registration details serve the logistics, but the medical message is the reason the campaign exists. In a disease category where many events can be prevented, awareness is not a slogan; it is the first step in preventing the next blood pressure reading from becoming a diagnosis.