AHA’s STEM Goes Red puts women’s underrepresentation in STEM in the spotlight
The American Heart Association brought students, mentors and industry leaders together in San Diego for STEM Goes Red, a program aimed at encouraging young women to enter science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. The event unfolded at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center and drew students from Castle Park High School, Sweetwater High School and Southwest High School for a four-hour series of interactive sessions. Hands-on breakout activities and speed mentoring gave the program a practical shape: students did not just hear about STEM careers, they met people working in them and were invited to imagine themselves in those roles.
The workforce gap the event is trying to address is large and persistent. Women make up almost half of employment in non-STEM occupations, yet just over 29% of the STEM workforce. In health care, research and technology, that imbalance does more than affect career pipelines. It influences who helps build the tools, studies the diseases and designs the systems that shape women’s health for decades.
One line from the event data captures the stakes with unusual clarity.
Of 100 female students working toward a bachelor’s degree, only three will be in a STEM job 10 years after graduation.
That attrition helps explain why workforce diversification cannot be treated as a symbolic goal. When fewer women remain in STEM, fewer women influence the direction of biomedical research, digital health, device development and clinical innovation. The result is not abstract. It reaches into research questions, product design, recruitment practices and the way health systems respond to patients whose needs have historically been underrepresented.
Why a career pipeline program belongs in a cardiovascular health campaign
STEM Goes Red launched in 2017 as part of the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women movement, and the connection between a youth career event and cardiovascular health is more direct than it first appears. Go Red for Women has spent more than 20 years advancing equitable research and care, advocating for inclusive health policies and raising awareness of cardiovascular disease as the leading health threat for women. Building a stronger pipeline of women into STEM is one way to influence that mission upstream.
When women are present in research teams, engineering groups, device companies and health technology firms, the questions asked about women’s physiology, symptoms, treatment response and care delivery are more likely to be sustained over time. A more representative STEM workforce also improves the odds that innovations are designed with women in mind from the start rather than adapted later. In cardiovascular medicine, where sex differences can affect risk recognition, trial participation and access to care, that kind of representation is not cosmetic. It shapes the science itself.
Angela Grant, San Diego Go Red for Women volunteer co-chair and chief legal officer at Palomar Holdings, framed the program as an investment in future innovation and community health. Sumi Shrishrimal, another San Diego Go Red for Women volunteer co-chair and executive vice president and chief risk officer at iRhythm Technologies, described the event as a way to open doors and give students both inspiration and tools. Their comments reflected the event’s central logic: exposure matters when students are deciding whether a field is reachable, welcoming and worth pursuing.
Hands-on exposure can alter what students can realistically picture
The structure of the San Diego program mattered because it was not built around passive listening. Students moved through educational experiences, breakout sessions and direct conversations with STEM leaders. That format is especially important for teenagers who may know the word “STEM” but have not yet seen how broad the field can be. A single afternoon can shift a student’s mental map from vague aspiration to concrete pathway—clinical research, engineering, data science, medical technology, laboratory science, public health and beyond.
For health systems and research organizations, the implication is straightforward: early exposure works best when it is practical and visible. Young women are more likely to imagine a place for themselves in STEM when they can speak with professionals who share aspects of their background, hear specific career stories and see how classroom learning connects to real-world problems. That approach also helps counter the misconception that STEM careers are limited to a narrow set of personalities or life trajectories.
The program’s local setting in San Diego also signals the value of community-based engagement. Events like this do not solve the workforce gap on their own, but they can influence the decision points that come long before a college degree or job application. That is where pipeline work becomes health work: the earlier the exposure, the broader the pool of future investigators, clinicians, engineers and technology leaders who may shape women’s health policy and care.
Go Red for Women extends beyond awareness into workforce equity
Go Red for Women is nationally sponsored by CVS Health, with local sponsors and supporters helping sustain regional programming. The movement’s broader aim is familiar to anyone working in cardiovascular care: reduce preventable disease, improve awareness and close gaps in access and outcomes. STEM Goes Red extends that mission into education and professional formation, linking awareness of women’s heart health to the people who will one day build prevention strategies, diagnostics and treatments.
Women’s cardiovascular disease remains the No. 1 health threat for women, and the movement has spent years urging women to know their risk and take action to reduce it. The San Diego event adds a different layer. It suggests that improving women’s health also means changing who gets to build the systems that define modern medicine. If underrepresentation persists in STEM, then women’s health risks remaining underrepresented in the rooms where data are analyzed, products are designed and priorities are set.
The program’s age group matters too. High school is a decisive stage for academic identity. A young person who leaves an event like this with a clearer sense of belonging in STEM may be more likely to choose advanced coursework, apply to competitive programs or persist through the inevitable barriers that appear later. The long-range payoff is not immediate, but the mechanism is visible: exposure, mentorship and aspiration can shape the future workforce that cardiovascular science depends on.
What the San Diego event did not do was claim to solve the gender gap in STEM. It offered a more grounded promise—one afternoon of access, mentorship and visible possibility in a field where women remain underrepresented. The unresolved question is how many such experiences, repeated consistently and supported over years, are needed to shift the numbers that still keep women out of STEM careers at the end of the pipeline.