There Is Never Really Just a Simple Choice: Nurse Advocacy for Gender-Transformative Cardiovascular Disease Prevention.

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of mortality for women globally and presents a considerable health burden despite decades of awareness campaigns. Messaging in these campaigns includes a significant focus on individual lifestyle behaviour modification for the prevention of cardiovascular disease, with health promotion campaigns and clinical organizations stating that 80%-90% of cardiovascular disease is preventable. Public messaging campaigns on prevention strategies have historically lacked differentiation for gender. As a result, they can overlook the complex factors that may hinder women from achieving the suggested lifestyle modifications, including the long-promoted trio of diet, exercise and tobacco. The non-coherence between the logics guiding cardiovascular disease prevention messaging and the competing logics of everyday life for women deserves attention. In this paper, we explore the assumptions evident in common cardiovascular disease prevention narratives and propose that nurses are well-positioned to advocate for gender-transformative health promotion.