Throughout her career, Cheng has maintained National Institutes of Health funding for research aimed at uncovering the drivers of cardiovascular aging. She has authored more than 450 scientific studies, many appearing in high-impact journals, including JAMA, Circulation and The New England Journal of Medicine.

Cheng identified differences in how males and females develop elevated blood pressure and demonstrated how people vary in their responses to COVID-19 vaccines over time. Her research has garnered multiple awards and contributed to Cedars-Sinai’s reputation as an international leader in biomedical sciences.

“Dr. Cheng is the perfect leader to build and enrich our already flourishing Department of Cardiology,” said Shlomo Melmed, MB, ChB, dean of the Medical Faculty and executive vice president of Medicine and Health Sciences. “We welcome her to this academic leadership role and look forward to the contributions she will make in strengthening the Smidt Heart Institute.”

Cheng, who succeeds Christine M. Albert, MD, MPH, has served on the editorial boards of major professional journals and on leadership committees for the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology.

She founded the largest COVID-19 clinical research program on the West Coast at the outset of the pandemic in 2020. More recently, she has led research to investigate the public health effects of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires.

Cheng has mentored dozens of junior faculty members in cardiology, anesthesiology, neurology, obstetrics and oncology, taking special pride in advising early-career investigators as well as high school and college students.

“I look forward to supporting the Smidt Heart Institute’s talented clinicians and researchers as they work to improve the lives of those affected by cardiovascular disease,” Cheng said.  

Cheng received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and her medical degree from McMaster University in Canada, as well as a master of medical science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master of public health degree from Harvard University. She completed her internal medicine training at Johns Hopkins University and cardiology training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she served as associate director of the Cardiovascular Imaging Core Laboratory.

In her new role, Cheng will lead strategic clinical, research and educational growth for the Department of Cardiology. As the new department chair, she will hold the Stephen R. Corday, MD, Distinguished Chair in Cardiology.

“Dr. Cheng has strengthened our institution and made many meaningful contributions through her research laboratory since joining Cedars-Sinai seven years ago,” said Eduardo Marbán, MD, PhD, executive director of the Smidt Heart Institute and the Mark Siegel Family Foundation Distinguished Chair. “We are excited for her to continue developing our world-class cardiology department.”

Read more from the Cedars-Sinai Newsroom: Cedars-Sinai Reports Heart Attacks, General Illness Spiked After LA Fires

“Wildfires that spread into urban areas have proven to be extremely dangerous because of how quickly they move and what they burn and release into the environment,” said Susan Cheng, MD, MPH, vice chair of Research Affairs in the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute and senior author of the study, published in JACC. “Our research suggests the Eaton and Pacific Palisades fires had an immediate effect on people’s health.”

The Cedars-Sinai Emergency Department is located on the academic medical center’s main campus, about 10 miles from Pacific Palisades and about 20 miles from Altadena, the locations where the largest L.A. fires ignited in January 2025. Investigators collected data on emergency department visits during the 90 days after the fires started, from Jan. 7 to April 7, 2025. They compared this data with emergency visit data collected during the same calendar period in the years 2018 through 2024. 

Although there wasn’t a significant difference in total emergency department visits during the first 90 days following the start of the wildfires in 2025 as compared with other years, there was a drastic increase in emergency department visits for certain conditions. Investigators found a 118% increase in visits for general illness, 46% increase in the number of visits for heart attack, and a 24% increase in visits for pulmonary illness when compared to the average rate of these conditions diagnosed during the same time window in the past seven years. 

“Fine particles released by wildfires can enter the body and cause injury, particularly to the heart and lungs,” said Cheng, who is also the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Cardiovascular Health and Population Science in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai. “Stress related to the fires may also contribute to a broad range of health issues.” 

The investigators found that abnormal blood test results related to general illness more than doubled in the 90-day period in 2025 as compared with that period in previous years. This is a finding not previously reported after major wildfires, according to the investigators.

“Abnormal blood test results could indicate that the body is responding to an external stressor such as toxins in the air,” said Joseph Ebinger, MD, MS, associate professor in the Department of Cardiology and first author of the study. “This study is an important step toward understanding how the Eaton and Palisades fires may have affected Angelenos’ health. We need more research to determine what we can do to mitigate any remaining risks and protect people from fire harm in the future.” 

This study is part of the larger LA Fire HEALTH Study, a research collaboration that seeks to determine the health effects of the fires that ignited in January 2025 in L.A. County. Investigators with Cedars-Sinai; the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC); Stanford University; UCLA; the University of California, Davis (UCD); the University of California, Irvine (UCI); the University of Texas at Austin; and Yale University plan to study the impacts of the fires for the next 10 years. 

Additional Cedars-Sinai authors include Tzu Yu Huang, MS; Sandy Joung, MSHS, MBA; Juliane Kwong, BS; Wasay Warsi, MS, BS; Nancy Sun, MPS; Jesse Navarrette, MPA; Patrick Botting, DHSc; Zaldy S. Tan, MD, MPH; and Alan C. Kwan, MD.

Other authors include Brian L. Claggett, PhD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Funding: This work was partially supported by the Spiegel Family Fund, the Smidt Heart Foundation, and the Erika J. Glazer Family Foundation. 

Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University is advancing groundbreaking research and educating future leaders in medicine, biomedical sciences and allied health sciences. Learn more about the university.

Although cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death for women, they remain underrepresented in clinical trials for common heart conditions. These findings, by investigators in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, were presented at the 2025 European Society of Cardiology Congress in Madrid.

“Numbers don’t lie,” said Martha Gulati, MD, director of Preventive Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute and senior author of the paper. “We hope that keeping track of male-to-female participant ratios will motivate researchers to design trials that reflect the real-world population.”

Gulati presented the findings in an oral abstract at the European Society of Cardiology Congress. The results were simultaneously published in JAMA Network Open.

Gulati and colleagues reviewed data from 1,079 cardiovascular clinical trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov from 2017 to 2023. Women accounted for 41% of the study participants. Investigators found the proportion of women included in clinical trials for certain conditions was much lower than the proportion of women who have these conditions.

The team applied a ratio called the participation-to-prevalence ratio (PPR) to capture whether the percentage of women in a clinical trial reflected how common the condition is among women. The participation-to-prevalence ratios for women were lowest for trials of coronary heart disease, acute coronary syndrome and stroke. Research on obesity and pulmonary hypertension had much higher female participation.

Investigators also found that younger women, ages 19 to 55, were more likely to participate in clinical trials than women 61 or older, and that women tended to enroll in trials studying lifestyle interventions and not trials studying procedures.

“Some studies might stop enrolling once they reach a certain number of people,” Gulati said. “It would be more equitable to continue enrolling until the number of women in the study reflects the proportion of women with that condition.”

The authors also recommend researchers improve outreach efforts to female patients.

“Although we’ve made progress, critical gaps persist,” said study co-author Susan Cheng, MD, MPH, the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Health and Population Science in the Smidt Heart Institute. “It’s important to ensure that what we learn from research can be applied to women, who represent more than half of the world’s population.”

Frederick Berro Rivera, MD, is first author of the study. Other authors include John Vincent Magalong, MD; Nathan Ross B. Bantayan, BSc; Nicole Tesoro, MD; Mark Jason Milan, MD; Vikramjit Purewal, DO; Polyn Luz S. Pine, MD, MBA; Chieh-Mei Tsai, MD; Ann Marie Navar, MD, PhD; Sharon L. Mulvagh, MD; James Januzzi, MD; C. Michael Gibson, MD; Anuradha Lala-Trindade, MD; Kyla Lara-Breitinger, MD; and Mayra Guerrero, MD.

Funding: This work was supported by contracts from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institutes, General Clinical Research Center, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Department of Defense, Gustavus and Louis Pfeiffer Research Foundation, Women’s Guild of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Ladies Hospital Aid Society of Western Pennsylvania, QMED, Edythe L. Broad and the Constance Austin Women’s Heart Research Fellowships (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center), Barbra Streisand Women’s Cardiovascular Research and Education Program (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center), Society for Women’s Health Research, Linda Joy Pollin Women’s Heart Health Program, Erika Glazer Women’s Heart Health Project, Adelson Family Foundation (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center), Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Career Development Award, and the Anita Dann Friedman Endowment in Women’s Cardiovascular Medicine & Research.

Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: Why Diversity Matters in Clinical Trials

In January 2020, before COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic, Cedars-Sinai treated one of the first COVID-19 patients in the U.S. Although it was a fearful time full of unknowns, physicians and investigators also knew it was an extraordinary moment in history.

“Working with that first patient on an unknown virus was tremendous,” said Jonathan Grein, MD, director of Hospital Epidemiology. “There was so much to learn. I remember wondering when I might develop symptoms and sleeping in the garage to avoid exposing others. When the first COVID-19 vaccine arrived later that year, we all paused to reflect on the effort and science that went into developing it. It was a remarkable time.”

But getting there was months in the making. Early on, a special Cedars-Sinai task force was meeting multiple times every day, strategizing about how to increase the hospital’s critical care capacity.

Michael Nurok, MB, ChB, PhD, now co-chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, was on the task force as director of the Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit.

“We were seeing the news out of Italy about the surge in patients with COVID-19, and we were asked to prepare for 1,000 critically ill patients on ventilators,” Nurok said. “We had to think about how we might use ventilators for multiple patients. Luckily, we never had to do that, but we had to prepare for the worst.”

Standout Memories

There was fear among patients, loved ones and providers alike, physicians said.

“Fear about not being able to manage all our patients, fear of running out of supplies, fear of colleagues getting sick, fear of my family or me getting sick,” said pulmonologist Isabel Pedraza, MD, director of the Medical Intensive Care Unit and a member of the hospital’s Special Pathogens Response Team.

In addition, hospitalized patients were isolated. Rabbi Jason Weiner, PhD, BCC senior rabbi and director of the Spiritual Care Department, said the situation reminded him of the importance of human connection.

“The lockdown happened around Easter and Passover,” Weiner said. “We made signs for the glass doors of the Intensive Care Unit, wishing patients happy holidays. Later they told us it was grounding to know what was happening in the outside world.”

In the beginning, the number of infected patients was overwhelming, said Peachy Hain, MSN, RN, executive director of Nursing, Surgical Services and Clinical Support Programs.

“We were running out of beds and low on supplies,” she said. “But nurses are resilient, adaptable and supportive. We acted quickly to convert recovery rooms into shared spaces. We made sure every mask, gown and piece of equipment lasted. It reinforced how creative and innovative we are, and, in the end, it made nurses closer. We are one team, one family.”

For Sam Torbati, MD, medical director of the Ruth and Harry Roman Emergency Department, the early days were marked by a constant reminder there was no script for how to handle a pandemic.

“We’re prepared for any situation, but COVID-19 didn’t come with a playbook,” Torbati said. “So, every day we were in battle mode and every day, at every level, we came with a strategy, a plan, and strong communication and team support.”

Lessons Learned

Rita Shane, PharmD, vice president and chief pharmacy officer, recalled various lessons learned in the wake of the pandemic; among them, using protocols developed during COVID-19 for other emergency situations. For example, last September, after Hurricane Helene damaged a manufacturing facility and severely limited the national supply of IV bags and fluids, Shane’s team used pandemic learnings to help manage the shortage.

“COVID-19 taught us we can more efficiently respond to any emergency going forward,” Shane said. “Our real-time response time is more accelerated, and our experts can navigate any situation.”

Shane also recalled that Cedars-Sinai was one of the first hospitals to get the COVID-19 vaccine in December 2020—another opportunity to navigate a new situation.

“We needed a specific storage plan, and we needed a rollout plan since we were one of the local sites coordinating public vaccination,” she said.

Pedraza called the rapid development of the vaccine “an incredible breakthrough that likely will be one of the top achievements of our time. Prior to this, it could take as long as a decade for a new vaccine. The COVID vaccine gave us hope that there was an end to the pandemic. I hope we don’t forget the power of vaccines to stop human suffering.”

Equally rapid and transformative was COVID-19 research, said Susan Cheng, MD, MMSc, MPH, the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Health and Population Science in the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute.

“We pivoted to focus on understanding how the virus affected people differently, as well as mitigation and prevention, and later, vaccine response,” said Cheng, a professor of Cardiology. “People in every corner of Cedars-Sinai helped us in what was the most fast-paced clinical research study I’ve ever been a part of. We learned how quickly research can answer impactful questions, and I hope our findings inform future policy and clinical practice. It was a testament to how people can stretch above and beyond to improve and protect the health of humanity.”

A Medical Landscape Altered

Grein, director of Hospital Epidemiology and head of the medical center’s Special Pathogens Response Team, said the pandemic gave him a glimpse into the future of healthcare.

“Medicine can be very conservative, and it often takes years for new guidelines to come out and change clinical practice,” he said. “COVID taught us how to more quickly respond to emerging science and adapt protocols to benefit patients and staff.”

Torbati, associate professor and co-chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine, agreed.

“We rapidly readjusted safety protocols during the pandemic, determined how to isolate patients, built treatment tents and created safe environments with adequate ventilation,” Torbati said. “We had to figure out how to do things differently while also responding to heart attacks, strokes, car accidents and other common Emergency Department situations. If a similar situation happens again, we’re very prepared.”

COVID-19 changed healthcare in many ways, Hain said, such as an increasing use of telehealth visits.

“We also use home health more effectively now, which frees up beds in the hospital for patients with more immediate needs,” she said. “We also expanded our mental health programs for staff. And we expanded community resources and outreach to improve care among Black, Hispanic and Asian patients, who faced the highest COVID death rates.”

Lasting Takeaways

David Marshall, JD, DNP, RN, senior vice president, chief nursing executive and chair of the Department of Nursing, offered three pandemic takeaways that he still relies upon daily.

“It’s critical to protect health providers so they can take care of the community, and as providers, we must pace ourselves and protect ourselves,” he said.

But heavy emotions still surface when he remembers the distress of COVID-19.

“A patient’s family shared with me that they watched on their iPhone during the lockdown and isolation as their loved one passed away while a nurse held their hand and stroked their brow,” he said. “There were moments of tragedy. There were moments of fear. There were moments of joy. COVID-19 was a moment when our institution shined while we took care of our community … and while we took care of each other.”

Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: New COVID-19 Vaccines Hit the Market  

“To see this level of investment in women’s heart health is remarkable,” said Arthur J. Ochoa, JD, senior vice president of Advancement and chief advancement officer at Cedars-Sinai. “Philanthropists like Erika Glazer are changing the face of healthcare and bringing advanced care to so many of our patients.”

Glazer’s journey into heart care began in 2013, when she established the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Heart Health. The funds generated by the chair’s endowment supported the work of Jennifer Van Eyk, PhD, an expert in the study of proteins whose research focuses on sex differences in heart disease. Van Eyk is director of Basic Science Research in the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, director of the Advanced Clinical Biosystems Institute and professor of Cardiology, Biomedical Sciences and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

“Science is an uncharted territory,” said Glazer. “I wanted to help ensure that women were not left behind when it comes to heart health and research.”

Glazer further widened her philanthropic focus in 2016 when she established the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Health and Population Science, currently occupied by Susan Cheng, MD, MPH, MMSc, director of the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging and division director of Population Health Sciences in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai.

Then in 2023, Glazer funded her third chair at Cedars-Sinai—the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Research, Education and Innovation. The inaugural chairholder is Janet Wei, MD, FACC, associate medical director of Cedars-Sinai’s Biomedical Imaging Research Institute, director of the Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship program in the Smidt Heart Institute, and associate professor of Cardiology and Biomedical Sciences at Cedars-Sinai. 

Righting a Wrong

Glazer’s philanthropic inspiration was sparked by her growing awareness of the underrepresentation of women in heart research, coupled with the need for greater gender equity in the United States.

“Women’s heart disease impacts everyone, in that all of us have a mother, a sister, a daughter, and/or a wife,” said Glazer, who at age 16 spent time interning at Cedars-Sinai—known then as Cedars of Lebanon—in the cardiology laboratories. “We must do more, we must do better, and we must do it now.”

While she considered a career in healthcare, Glazer opted to join her father, Guilford Glazer, in real estate development.

Glazer has made a name for herself in the male-dominated fields of construction and sports. A successful equity investor, she currently is a co-owner of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.

“If it’s your passion, nothing should stand in your way,” Glazer said.

In addition to aiding Cedars-Sinai’s mission to attract and retain exceptional investigators, in 2016, Glazer also pledged $7.2 million for the Erika J. Glazer Women’s Heart Research Initiative at the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center to support investigations into heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), a type of heart failure that primarily affects women.

“We are increasingly thankful to Erika Glazer—our colleague, our friend and our partner—for helping us to uncover the secrets of women’s heart health and disease,” said C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, FACC, director of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center, and the Irwin and Sheila Allen Chair in Women’s Heart Research. “She is a doer, and she is changing the face of heart disease for women and men.”

A Champion for Women

Wei, the newest chairholder supported by Glazer, is awed by the woman behind its creation.

“I’m honored to join an inspiring group of women leaders who have benefited from the vision and generosity of Erika Glazer,” Wei said. “She is a champion for women’s heart health and is providing opportunities for my colleagues and me to advance the research, education and innovations that will save lives.”

 Read more from Discoveries: Women’s Health and Sex Differences—Research Update

Gulati, the study’s co-lead author, told TIME that because women usually have less muscle mass than men, the same amount of exercise can be just as or more impactful.

“For me, the news to women is: a little goes a long way,” Gulati said.

Gulati, the Anita Dann Friedman Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Medicine and Research, told TIME that men should not feel discouraged by the study’s findings.

“Our pitch should be the same to men and women: something is better than nothing,” Gulati said. “Sit less and move more.”

In an interview with ABCNews.com, Cheng, the study’s senior author, said the results were “exciting and positive, especially for the really busy women out there who are juggling a lot of responsibilities both at work and at home.”

Cheng, who holds the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Health and Population Science, told CNN.com that exercising is a choice, but the benefits can be significant. 

“The irony is that exercise is free,” Cheng said. “The catch, of course, is that exercise takes work.”

Click here to read the complete article from TIME, here to read the complete article on ABCNews.com and here to read the complete article on CNN.com.

The findings, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), show that women can exercise less often than men, yet receive greater cardiovascular gains.   

“Women have historically and statistically lagged behind men in engaging in meaningful exercise,” said Martha Gulati, MD, director of Preventive Cardiology in the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, the Anita Dann Friedman Chair in Women's Cardiovascular Medicine and Research and co-lead author of the study. “The beauty of this study is learning that women can get more out of each minute of moderate to vigorous activity than men do. It’s an incentivizing notion that we hope women will take to heart.”

Investigators analyzed data from 412,413 U.S. adults utilizing the National Health Interview Survey database. Participants between the time frame of 1997 to 2019—55% of whom were female—provided survey data on leisure-time physical activity. Investigators examined gender-specific outcomes in relation to frequency, duration, intensity and type of physical activity.

“For all adults engaging in any regular physical activity, compared to being inactive, mortality risk was expectedly lower,” said Susan Cheng, MD, MPH, the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Health and Population Science, director of the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging in the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute, and senior author of the study. “Intriguingly, though, mortality risk was reduced by 24% in women and 15% in men.”

The research team then studied moderate to vigorous aerobic physical activity, such as brisk walking or cycling, and found that men reached their maximal survival benefit from doing this level of exercise for about five hours per week, whereas women achieved the same degree of survival benefit from exercising just under about 2 1/2 hours per week.

Similarly, when it came to muscle-strengthening activity, such as weightlifting or core body exercises, men reached their peak benefit from doing three sessions per week and women gained the same amount of benefit from about one session per week.

Cheng said that women had even greater gains if they engaged in more than 2 1/2 hours per week of moderate to vigorous aerobic activity, or in two or more sessions per week of muscle-strengthening activities. The investigators note their findings help to translate a longstanding recognition of sex-specific physiology seen in the exercise lab to a now-expanded view of sex differences in exercise-related clinical outcomes.

With all types of exercise and variables accounted for, Gulati says there’s power in recommendations based on the study’s findings. 

“Men get a maximal survival benefit when performing 300 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per week, whereas women get the same benefit from 140 minutes per week,” Gulati said. “Nonetheless, women continue to get further benefit for up to 300 minutes a week.”

Christine M. Albert, MD, MPH, chair of the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute and the Lee and Harold Kapelovitz Distinguished Chair in Cardiology, says concrete, novel studies like this don’t happen often.

“I am hopeful that this pioneering research will motivate women who are not currently engaged in regular physical activity to understand that they are in a position to gain tremendous benefit for each increment of regular exercise they are able to invest in their longer-term health,” said Albert, professor of Cardiology.

Other Cedars-Sinai authors include Tzu Yu Huang, MSc; Alan Kwan, MD; David Ouyang, MD; and Joseph Ebinger, MD. Other authors include Hongwei Ji, MD; Kaitlin Casaletto, PhD; Kerrie L. Moreau, PhD; and Hicham Skali, MD, MSc.

Funding: This work was supported in part by NIH grants K23HL153888, K23AG058752, R21HL156132, R01HL142983, R01HL151828, R01HL131532, R01HL143227, R01AG072475, U54AG062319, and U54AG065141, and the Erika J Glazer Family Foundation, National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFC2502800), National Natural Science Foundation of China (82103908), Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2021QH014), Shuimu Scholar Program of Tsinghua University, and National Postdoctoral Innovative Talent Support Program (BX20230189).

Read more from the Cedars-Sinai Blog: High Blood Pressure: How to Recognize and Treat It

But there is hope, according to Natalie Bello, MD, MPH, director of Hypertension Research in the Department of Cardiology, and colleague Susan Cheng, MD, MPH, the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Health and Population Science, who recently authored a perspective article in the journal Circulation Research.  

The paper reflects on women’s cardiovascular health during the past century and looks ahead to the many advances happening in the field. Bello spoke with the Cedars-Sinai Newsroom to share more.

What do women need to know about their cardiovascular health?

Heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death in women, but surveys show women tend to think they are more likely to die of cancer, particularly breast cancer. The most important thing to remember is that heart disease kills more women than all types of cancer combined.

Are some women at greater risk than others?

Almost 20% of women who get pregnant experience complications, such as high blood pressure, preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, that have important implications for their future heart health. These conditions are associated with a higher incidence of heart disease that often happens early in the lifespan.

What progress has been made?

Thanks to pioneers like C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, director of the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center in the Smidt Heart Institute, the medical community is now actively involved in the advancement of women’s heart disease research and care. Her leadership in this area has broadened visibility to gender differences in things like heart attack symptoms and the diagnosis of small vessel heart disease.

Could you give an example of how increased research into women's cardiovascular health has led to better treatment for women?

There is a now a blood test approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, developed by Cedars-Sinai investigators, that we can use to understand a woman's risk for preeclampsia. It helps tell us when a pregnant woman is safe to go home, or if she needs to stay in the hospital for closer monitoring, treatment or early delivery. We use it very frequently.

This is just one of many examples of how Cedars-Sinai has led in women’s heart health.

When should women think about their cardiovascular health?

At age 20, women should establish care with a primary care physician and have their cardiovascular risk assessed. At minimum, all women should visit a primary care provider annually for a blood pressure check.

What are the best ways to prevent cardiovascular disease?

Learn about your personal risk and ways you can modify the disease. That advice is based on the knowledge that 80% of cardiovascular disease is preventable. By doing things like stopping smoking, eating healthy, maintaining a healthy body weight, exercising and sleeping well, we can prevent or delay the progression of heart disease.

Why is it that women's cardiovascular health has been ignored?

In a paper published in 1912, a researcher named Dr. James Herrick and colleagues described heart disease as something that occurred in men. But they published another paper in 1928 showing that the same thing was happening in women. For whatever reason, the follow-up work never gained traction, and that set the stage for heart disease being seen as a man’s issue.

Early epidemiologic research also demonstrated a delay in the onset of heart disease in women compared with men. Noting that women’s risk seemed to increase after menopause, estrogen was believed to be protective and premenopausal women’s risk for heart disease was thought to be low. We now realize that societal issues and habits at the time also influenced risk: Men were more likely to smoke, and women didn’t start smoking socially until later in the last century. Unfortunately, when smoking became socially acceptable for women, there was an uptick in women's heart disease as a result.

I think one of the main reasons women’s cardiovascular health wasn't really investigated is that there was not as much diversity in science and medicine at the time. If you don't experience things, you don't know what questions to ask. I'm not saying it's impossible, but a bunch of men sitting around a table aren't necessarily going to ask each other, “I wonder how excessive menstrual bleeding impacts heart disease risk?” and decide to examine that in a research study.

What can women who aren’t scientists do to ensure the medical system addresses their needs?

It often takes people outside of the scientific community to remind us that we need to be examining certain issues in women’s health. A lot of times it comes from patients who experienced something in their own pregnancy or in their own heart health journey and either started a foundation or lobbied elected officials to increase funding for research related to women. It’s also important for women to feel empowered to discuss their concerns with their clinicians, and if they feel they aren’t being listened to, they should find another person to listen to their symptoms and work them up appropriately.

Read more from the Cedars-Sinai Blog: High Blood Pressure: How to Recognize and Treat It

Cheng, senior and co-corresponding author of the study, told TODAY correspondent Erin McLaughlin that people ages 25 to 44 saw a nearly 30% increase in heart attack deaths over the first two years of the pandemic—a surprising finding without a clear explanation.

“Young people are obviously not really supposed to die of heart attack,” Cheng told McLaughlin. “They’re not really supposed to have heart attacks at all.”

Cheng said that the connection between COVID-19 and heart attack deaths was “more than coincidental.”

She added, “There are a lot of things that COVID can do to the cardiovascular system. It appears to be able to increase the stickiness of the blood and increase ... the likelihood of blood clot formation. It seems to stir up inflammation in the blood vessels. It seems to also cause in some people an overwhelming stress—whether it’s related directly to the infection or situations around the infection—that can also cause a spike in blood pressure.”

Cheng told McLaughlin that people who have COVID-19 multiple times also are at higher risk of heart problems. She emphasized keeping blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar under control.

“I'd love to say we're ... coming out on the other side and we can think of COVID more so like the common cold. Unfortunately, that is not the case," Cheng said.

Click here to read the article and view the segment on TODAY.