What are you doing New Year’s Eve? This year, area women are going to
have a New Year’s Eve party with lots of heart.
In addition to being a wonderful event to
kick off the new year with our partners and friends, a group of
Rehoboth/Lewes-area businesses and nonprofit organizations are banding
together to wage the battle against women’s heart disease—the #1
killer of women in the United States.
While this campaign to increase awareness
and work for early detection, accurate diagnosis, and quality treatment
on behalf of the women of Sussex County will be a long-term effort, the
program’s launch will be at a giant New Year’s Eve party at the
Rehoboth Beach Convention Center.
The event, co-sponsored by the CAMP
Rehoboth Women’s Project, will be the cornerstone of what is expected
to be a big women’s weekend here at the beach. The party organizers,
under the leadership of Dr. Roni Posner of Lewes, expect to sell 500
tickets or more and they are encouraging folks to come to Rehoboth/
Lewes for the final weekend of December and stay through New Year’s
day.
Called the Starburst Gayla, the event is
planned for 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, with great music by a
popular DJ, cash bar, midnight champagne toast, plus a coffee and
dessert buffet. Tickets are $40 and can be obtained at the Camp Rehoboth
office or by calling 302-227-5620.
Proceeds from the event will go to the
Camp Rehoboth Women’s Project and WomenHeart, a non-profit
organization and the nation’s only patient advocacy organization
representing the 8,000,000 American women living with heart disease.
According to Posner, “Our plan is to
continue this awareness campaign, through 2003 and beyond, with more
events, presentations at clubs and churches, and potentially an
information “hotline” for Rehoboth/Lewes area women and their
families to call.”
WomenHeart
promotes early detection, accurate diagnosis, and proper
treatment for women through its support, information, and advocacy
programs.
Posner is one of the 59 women heart
patients from around the country who recently returned from
WomenHeart’s first Science and Leadership Symposium at the Mayo Clinic
in Rochester, Minnesota. The Symposium combined medical lectures by Mayo
Clinic staff and small-group sessions, including media and presentation
skills training.
WomenHeart’s executive director, Nancy
Loving, and Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Sharonne Hayes, the Symposium’s
Medical Director, were both exuberant about the four-day event. “It
exceeded our wildest expectations—we are just thrilled!”
The women attending the symposium renewed
their commitments to work in their communities to improve the way women
heart patients are treated. “We
are on a mission,” said Susan Cardelli of San Francisco, California.
“Now we are a united and powerful force to be reckoned with.”
That force is setting out to combat
notions that women are not at risk for heart disease and try to make
people aware that women may have different symptoms than men. Often,
according to WomenHeart, women go to emergency rooms with symptoms that
are sometimes mistaken for indigestion or flu when they are actually
having heart attacks. Getting women to understand their risks and
symptoms, as well as getting the medical community to recognize these
issues is the top priority of WomenHeart.
Posner will now pursue WomenHeart’s
community-wide initiative to bring awareness of the issue of women’s
heart disease to our community. As part of that effort in support of the
women of Lewes, Rehoboth, and other local jurisdictions, local
corporations and businesses are being asked to support WomenHeart and
assist in this community-wide battle against women’s heart disease.
For the Starburst Gayla, the host
committee includes Roni Posner, Margo Orland, Natalie Moss, Joan Glass,
Inez Conover, Ellen Passman, Linda Frese, Maggie Shaw, and Maggie Ottato.
For more information about WomenHeart,
check out their website at www.womenheart.org.
For more information about the
Starburst Gayla, call 302-227-5620.
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