In support of the Heart Foundation’s Go Red For Women initiative, Knox Shopping Centre hosted a breakfast last week to raise awareness for heart disease.
Melissa Downes, centre manager for Knox Shopping Centre, says that with heart disease being one of the largest risks to women across Victoria, supporting the Heart Foundation’s Go Red For Women campaign will not only help raise awareness but will hopefully go towards reducing the number of its victims.
“This is the third consecutive year we have joined forces with the Heart Foundation for this all important cause,” she says. “Victorian women are able to identify lifestyle risk factors such as poor diet and lack of exercise but are far less likely to identify clinical risk factors such as high blood pressure or diabetes.
“With 90 per cent of women having at least one symptom of heart disease, we wanted to help to raise awareness about all the risk factors by holding various events throughout June and in turn help to reduce deaths in Victoria that result from this
Disease,” said Downes.
Further supporting the fight against heart disease, Knox Shopping Centre is supporting women in taking the ‘Ten for Ten’ pledge on June 23 and 24, encouraging them to take 10 seconds of their time to make a pledge to improve their heart health, potentially adding another 10 years to their lives.
“The Ten for Ten pledge is a great way to make a promise to yourself and your family to improve your heart health,” Heart Foundation (Victoria) CEO, Kathy Bell said.
“With the support of Knox Shopping Centre, we can further encourage women to feel guilt free about taking some time for themselves – highlighting that by doing this they are also helping give more time to their families.”
Pledgers will be encouraged to identify their own health heart risk factors and to also find, tag and share their pledge photo with Facebook friends.