CDC Foundation’s Live to the Beat campaign is launching a “Heart2Heart Challenge” to encourage Black women to give themselves permission to prioritize self-care for their own heart health.

There is a relationship between COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease: deaths from heart disease and stroke have increased during the pandemic. Furthermore, the potential long-term effects of COVID-19 on cardiovascular disease are unknown at this time. Today, the CDC Foundation announced a new coalition to get ahead of this threat with a new campaign to empower more adults to prevent heart disease and strokes. The campaign is supported by the “Alliance for the Million Hearts Campaign,” a newly formed public-private coalition to help fuel the Million Hearts® Initiative toward its goal of preventing one million heart attacks and strokes by 2022. The national campaign will focus on changing the way people think about and embrace managing their heart health helping people understand the importance of heart health, realize their opportunities to be successful and take steps that lower their risks.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), African-American men are 25 percent more likely to die from heart disease, compared to non-Hispanic white men. To help address this health disparity, the CDC Foundation is partnering with Pfizer and Quest Diagnostics to launch the Million Hearts® “Healthy is Strong” initiative.

To provide a health communication campaign related to heart disease education and prevention in the United States with the goal of informing Americans ages 35-64 on the risk factors of heart disease and stroke and inspiring action.