(upbeat music)
- I've been working with the
American Heart Association
since 2009 in the Kansas City area
for quality of care and stroke.
In 2009,
I had a stroke of my own.
My mission has become more passionate,
has become more powerful.
I can speak for those that
may have lost their voice
to drive patient care
outcome improvement forward
so we can reduce the long term
disability numbers in stroke.
What this does is it give
survivors a platform to
record and catalog and talk about their
diagnosis, it talks
about their treatments,
either the invasive or the pharmacy,
the medications that they take.
How they take care of themselves.
There's even a genetic component to it.
It's what our hope is is that we can drive
change forward for the next generation.
We want to make sure that we have a hand
in the ability to make treatments
as far as surgical the least invasive
that they possibly can be.
That they last longer and longer each time
new research is founded.
Or those medications have the
least amount of side effects
or you get the lowest dosage.
So you have a quality of life to live
if unfortunately you've gotten that
cardiovascular disease
or that cerebrovascular disease diagnosis.
We're going to start with
a pilot of 2,000 people
and eventually we hope to grow it to
a quarter of a million.
So survivors are going to be protecting
the generations to come.
It was an unbelievable experience
when I was talking to
my friends and family
at home last night, as
I'm getting emotional.
It's kind of like the Oscars for
heart and brain nerds.
We get to be around all
of these brilliant minds
with the one thing in common
that we want to defeat,
the number one killer of Americans
and that's cardiovascular disease.
We are trying to get to the best practice
to ensure that all patient
outcomes are positive
and that they're quality
of life is maintained.
It's a whirlwind to ensure that you get to
the right lectures that
you want to be involved in.
They have an app which has made this such
an easy, wonderful experience.
That you can go in and pick the components
and categories that you're interested in,
you can go in and view those.
You have your agenda
for the day so to speak,
from beginning to end.
It tells you exactly where you need to be.
It lets you continue to be
involved in social media
and even some of those things that you
didn't make to the lecture that you may
have wanted to 'cause it conflicted.
You can get all of the components there
so you can still be a part of that.
There's a lot of live streaming
which is very exciting as well.
It's so much fun that when you go in
and check into the particular
lecture that you are in,
you can actually type your
questions as you think of them
for those to be answered
at the end of the session.
If I take it down to the
level of just myself,
had all of the research not been funded
and not been done,
I very well not be able
to talk to you right now.
Because of that research
and because of the funding
that the American Heart
Association provides
for all of these entities to
be able to work on this
research, it's saving lives.
It saved my life in
several different ways,
not just because of my stroke here.
Because of my congenital heart defect
as well as my atrial fibrillation.
It just shows that the passion
and the mission is there
for a vision of a world free
of cardiovascular disease.
Without that research,
it's just not gonna happen.
(upbeat music)
