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More young women are dying from heart disease — and people are missing these warning signs

Women’s heart health needs its pink-ribbon moment.

You know what a pink ribbon signifies. Breast cancer, right? Now what about a red dress?

Did you come up with heart disease? No? Don’t worry: You’re not alone.

Heart disease is the leading killer of cisgender American women — and that trend shows no signs of slowing. New projections estimate the share of US women with heart disease will keep rising through 2050, affecting more than 22 million women, with the sharpest increases among younger women ages 20 to 44. Heart attacks are already becoming more deadly for adults under 55 — again, particularly for younger women who don’t have the traditional risk factors. The prevalence and deadliness of heart disease for women specifically has been a public health problem for a long time, and it’s getting worse.

Yet awareness of that crisis seems to be shrinking, not growing. An American Heart Association survey published in 2020 found that US women’s awareness that heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death and that women can experience unique heart symptoms fell sharply, from 65 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2019. Knowledge about the symptoms of a serious cardiac event also declined. More recent data isn’t much more encouraging: In a 2025 survey of cardiologists by the Women’s Health Alliance, 84 percent said that they had treated a female patient whose heart condition was misdiagnosed by another doctor.

In that 2020 AHA survey, a growing number of women thought it was breast cancer, not heart disease, that killed the most women. Cardiologists look at their oncologist colleagues with a hint of envy.

“I’m just jealous of them. They’ve done a good job at getting out the message. We have not,” said Dr. Martha Gulati, a cardiologist at Houston Methodist Hospital.

It’s not for lack of trying. Groups like the AHA have made admirable efforts to raise awareness, including The Heart Truth campaign and Go Red for Women. But the stagnating progress suggests that a new approach might be needed. Gulati said she wears a red dress pin at work all the time, but her own patients rarely know what it signifies.

“These are people that are living with heart disease, and they don’t even know what it means,” Gulati said. “The problem is that we are not reaching women. It is not resonating with women… I actually really believe that a rebrand is required.”

Why it’s been so hard to make women’s heart health a priority

What makes the lack of awareness about women’s heart disease so perplexing is the fact that scientists have known about their unique risk for years.

In the 1980s and 1990s, researchers first noticed that while men were seeing marked improvements in outcomes from heart disease and heart attacks, women were not. In........

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