Women's heart health fair to honor UF professor's deceased wife

February 15, 2007

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — On Dec. 2, 2006, after sitting down with her husband Steve to watch a Gator football game on television, Joyce Pokorny, 43, suffered a fatal heart attack.

To increase awareness about women’s heart disease, the first annual Women’s Heart Health Fair in Memory of Joyce Pokorny will be from 8:30 a.m. to noon Saturday at Haile Village Farmers’ Market in Haile Plantation. The fair will offer free heart health screenings including blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose level checks, and provide women with information and lifestyle coaching about ways to reduce their risk for heart disease.

The event, planned by Steve Pokorny, associate professor in the Department of Health Education and Behavior in the College of Health and Human Performance, is designed to increase knowledge about women’s heart disease and identify women with cardiac risk factors through free heart health screenings. Saturday would have been his wife’s 44th birthday.

“If we can get women screened and make them aware of their risk factors, maybe it will help one or two other people to get appropriate medical attention before it’s too late,” Pokorny said.

“The level of community support is encouraging; it is exciting to see the range of people who have sponsored and donated to support this event,” he said.

Friends, neighbors, local merchants and even health care professionals who were involved in Joyce’s care are showing their support for the event, Pokorny said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, heart attacks kill six times as many women as breast cancer each year, yet most women don’t take their risk of heart disease seriously. Heart disease is a lifelong condition; once you get it, you will always have it. It is important to take action to prevent a heart attack, experts say.

“I am a prevention scientist, and here is an issue that is a leading cause of death among women,” Pokorny said. “We’ve done a good job educating women about breast cancer, but we need to do more to inform women about a bigger threat, heart disease.”

Pokorny hopes to make the Heart Health Fair an annual event including follow-up information reminding women to be vigilant about their heart health. He would like to see it grow to include women in the broader Gainesville community, including female university students.

Donations to the Joyce Pokorny Memorial Fund will be accepted at the Health Fair. Tickets will be sold for a raffle in order to generate resources for the Memorial Fund. Local businesses donated all prizes to be used for the raffle.

According to the National Institutes of Health, heart disease is the leading cause of death among women in the United States. However, only 13 percent of women are aware that heart disease is a major threat to their health. Heart disease is often referred to as “the silent killer.”