“It’s the heart of what we do.”

Eleven years ago, a call from Michelle Burke’s doctor interrupted dinner at home.

She needed surgery and she needed it right away. Exhaustion had prompted Michelle, then 32, to see a different doctor a few months before. “You’ve got three young children,” her former doctor had told her. “Everybody’s tired.”

Michelle’s sister Shari had died of heart disease at age 19. “Despite my family history, no one considered that I might have heart disease.”

But Michelle had cardiomyopathy, a serious disease in which the heart muscle becomes weakened and doesn’t work as well as it should. It can also cause arrhythmias, abnormal heartbeats that make the heart pump less effectively. Most arrhythmias aren’t life-threatening, but some are extremely dangerous and require treatment and management. Michelle’s would.

Michelle was in the hospital for 10 days. She had medications adjusted to help her heart function better, and doctors implanted an internal cardiac defibrillator (ICD) to deliver an electrical shock if her heart went into a dangerous rhythm.

The ICD implant was only the start of the changes in her life. Michelle committed to take better care of herself. Before her diagnosis, she would eat the crusts off her kids’ peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and stay up late to do an extra load of laundry instead of exercising. Taking care of herself was not a priority.

Thanks to our Go Red For Women initiative, Michelle has learned to take steps to protect her heart. “Don’t ignore your symptoms.

You are the expert on you. If you have fears or questions or you’re not feeling well, get it checked out.” That commitment to getting healthier has rubbed off on daughter Madison, 16, who has joined the Youth Advisory Board of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation (our partnership with the William J. Clinton Foundation).

Madison works with other youth to empower kids to make healthy changes to prevent childhood obesity. ...

Visit American Heart Association 2008 Annual Report Download Page

Read American Heart Association 2008 Annual Report online, or you can download the entire report in PDF format.

American Heart Association
1-800-AHA-USA1
www.americanheart.org

American Stroke Association
A division of the American Heart Association
1-888-4-STROKE (1-888-478-7653)
For more information on life after stroke, ask for the stroke family “Warmline”
www.StrokeAssociation.org

National Center
7272 Greenville Avenue
Dallas, Texas 75231-4596

From the CEO
As the letter above notes, achieving part of our 2010 strategic goal was an important milestone. We didn’t achieve this victory alone. It’s also a tribute to our many partners in the fight against heart disease and stroke.

We’ve shown how our organization can do things in a big way. When we set the goal in 1998, we knew our volunteers and staff across the country wouldn’t achieve it by trying to save one life at a time. Instead, we needed to change entire systems and save thousands of lives at a time.

This progress is thanks in part to programs like Get With The Guidelines, our quality improvement program that empowers healthcare providers to treat heart and st roke patients according to the most up-to-date guidelines. It’s also due to our work in areas like advocacy to make America breathe easier; more than 60 percent of the country is now smoke free! We can also credit many other initiatives that make our country healthier and safer.

All of these accomplishments played a role in partially achieving our 2010 strategic goal two years early – reducing coronary heart disease and stroke death rates and reducing the risk factors for these diseases by 30.2 percent by 2010. This reduction means that in 2005, about 160,000 more people were alive.

This annual report discusses our year’s achievements in these and other areas, all working together to maximize progress toward our strategic goal. We know we still have work to do as we continue to systematically attack cardiovascular disease across the knowledge spectrum by:

• Discovering knowledge through research,
• Adapting knowledge for different audiences by offering information in different formats, levels of difficulty and languages
• Disseminating knowledge through a variety of materials, media, activities and services.

We hope you’ll enjoy reading about these accomplishments. I will retire in December 2008 and want to thank volunteers and staff for your support. It has been my privilege to serve the American Heart Association.

M. Cass Wheeler
Chief Executive Officer

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