A nationwide movement that celebrates the energy, passion and power women have comes together on Friday February 6, to celebrate Wear Red Day.

The day marks the American Heart Association's Go Red For Womenr "Wear Red Day" which is an attempt to create awareness of heart disease in women and support in the fight against it.

Women band together all wearing red and more than 10,000 companies throughout the country join in the movement with many cities across the nation illuminating monuments, landmarks and major buildings in red to show their support in the fight against heart disease.

Heart disease is usually a problem that is associated with men while in fact one in three women have cardiovascular disease, and every minute one woman dies as a result of this health threat. Since the 1970s half-million women every year have succumbed to heart disease with no real decline through 2002. A surprising fact for many is that heart disease kills 17 times more women than breast cancer does every year.

Dr. Gina Lundberg, cardiologist and director of the Heart Center for Women at St. Joseph's Hospital said, "Forty percent of women who had a heart attack had no previous warning symptoms. It's really something you have to be looking for even if you consider yourself a healthy female because your first symptom can be the heart attack."

The American Heart Association annual Go Red campaign was launched in 2003 and Go Red for Women, Friday's National Wear Red Day and Wear Red Sundays are all geared toward raising awareness about heart disease in women and its risk factors. Marla Wilson, director of the campaign said this year's goal is to raise $500,000 to help fund the agency's education and research efforts. The biggest fund raiser, Wilson said will be held May 1.

Since the start of the Go Red for Women campaign the number of women dying from the disease has reduced with about 360,000 women died from heart disease and another 90,000 died from stroke annually. "It's not a huge reduction but it's a reduction due largely to the awareness campaign," Lundberg said.

The only problem is that the awareness is not reaching the people who are most affected, the African American and Hispanic women. "The information is not reaching those communities. So we're trying to establish more programs so they hear about the risk factors," Lundberg said.

The factors that make these groups more susceptible to the disease are the high incidence of diabetes and obesity in these populations. "I think the good news is prevention is possible," said Lundberg. "When these risk factors are identified early, there are things you can do to prevent heart disease. If we get the word out to women early, in their 20s and 30s, about the risk factors, then we're going to save a whole lot more lives."