Karen Yontz Women's Cardiac Awareness Center

Most women don’t know that heart disease is the number one killer of women in the U.S. At the Karen Yontz Women's Cardiac Awareness Center, our goal is to raise awareness and educate women with the tools and information they need to lead a more heart-healthy lifestyle.

We promote wellness, advocate for early diagnosis, and ultimately, aim to help decrease the incidence of heart disease in women. We care for the special hearts of women and we empower you to do the same.

What services are offered?

As a non-clinical resource center, we offer a wide variety of informative, educational, and supportive tools and services to help you make heart-healthy decisions – even if you haven’t talked to your doctor yet. These services include:

• Heart-health education
• Screenings
• One-on-one consultation
• Weight-management assistance
• Classes and events

What are some heart disease risk factors for women?

Though these are just some of the considerations you should be aware of, our center can help provide further education – and no one is a better advocate for your health than you are.

• Family history: While a family history of heart disease means you're more likely to get it, it’s not a certainty. Knowing this, you can affect positive changes to your lifestyle to minimize risk.
• Lifestyle choices: Inactivity – which nearly doubles a woman’s risk for heart disease – diet, cholesterol, hypertension, and other factors contribute to your heart health.
• Early awareness: Even in young, healthy women, changes during pregnancy such as preeclampsia (high blood pressure) and gestational diabetes can offer clues about potential future risk.
• Even if you feel fine, you may still be at risk: Factors beyond family history, age, and lifestyle can play a role in your risk for heart disease. Consider scheduling a screening such as Aurora's $49 heart scan, which can detect whether you’re at increased risk based on calcium deposits in your arteries.

More about the Karen Yontz Women's Cardiac Awareness Center

Our center is named after Karen Yontz, a young woman who fought an inspiring battle against both cancer and debilitating heart disease. After beating Hodgkin’s lymphoma in her 20s, Karen experienced a heart attack at 40 and passed away from heart-related complications at 48. In addition to this center, Aurora St. Luke’s is also home to the Karen Yontz Center for Cardio-Oncology, our team dedicated to treating heart-related complications of cancer treatment.

Karen recognized the far-reaching impact heart disease has on individuals and families as well as communities. Inspired by her story, the knowledgeable, helpful staff at our center is eager to listen and help you find a path to a healthier heart – for you and for your loved ones. We’re here to guide you to the information you need.

Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center
2900 West Oklahoma Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53201
414-649-5767

Are you at risk for heart disease?

Knowing your risk factors of heart disease – the leading cause of death in the U.S. – can help you lower your chances of developing it. Our heart health quiz estimates your risk, determines which of your risk factors are controllable, and gives you an idea of what to do next based on your results.

Take the heart health quiz