Two Major Healthcare Providers Join Forces with Supermarket Chains and Food Brands to Fight Heart Disease

The innovative program includes a 16-page booklet entitled HeadsUp on Heart Disease(TM), filled with good-for-your-heart recipes, high-value coupons, tips on diet, exercise and weight management and a $5.00 instant savings offer from MasterCard, one of six sponsoring brands. The other sponsoring brands are: Blue Diamond(R) Almonds, Carolina(R) Rice, Filippo Berio(R) Olive Oil, Fleischmann's(R) Yeast and Kashi(R) Cereal. For the full story -

In an historic pairing, The New Jersey Heart Institute at Lourdes - the largest provider of inpatient cardiac care in the entire Delaware Valley - and St. Mary Medical Center, named by Solucient as one of the nation's Top 100 hospitals in 2003 - and with one of the fastest growing cardiac programs in the region - have teamed up to give Delaware Valley residents a multi-media "heads up" message about the prevention of heart disease this coming February, American Heart Month.

The innovative program includes a 16-page booklet entitled HeadsUp on Heart Disease(TM), filled with good-for-your-heart recipes, high-value coupons, tips on diet, exercise and weight management and a $5.00 instant savings offer from MasterCard, one of six sponsoring brands. The other sponsoring brands are: Blue Diamond(R) Almonds, Carolina(R) Rice, Filippo Berio(R) Olive Oil, Fleischmann's(R) Yeast and Kashi(R) Cereal.

The booklet is being distributed free to residents of southern New Jersey, Bucks County, and neighboring areas through St. Mary Medical Center, Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County and their participating physicians and more than 200 outlets of these supermarket chains: Acme(R), Clemens(R), Family Markets, Genuardi's(R), GIANT(R) Food Stores, McCaffrey's(R) Supermarkets, Pathmark(R) and Super Fresh(R).

The program also includes two one-half hour TV specials entitled, "Paul Dillon Cooks with the Cardiologists" to air on CN8, The Comcast Network. Part One, to air SUNDAY, February 15, 2004, 4:00-4:30 PM/ET pairs TV chef Dillon with Lourdes cardiologists Drs. John Hamaty, Steven Klier and Donald Orth, preparing a heart healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner. In Part Two, to air SATURDAY, February 21, 1:00-1:30 PM/ET, Dillon prepares three more meals with cardiologists Drs. Charles Paraboschi and Rakesh Shah and heart surgeon, Dr. Charles Raudat, from St. Mary.

In addition, Chef Dillon and the six physicians, all of whom cook as a hobby, will do a total of nine personal appearances at participating area supermarkets where they will serve up recipes from the TV shows and answer questions from shoppers.

Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) is the number one killer of men and women in America, and both hospitals see plenty of all types of heart disease. The New Jersey Heart Institute at Lourdes, the region's leading provider of cardiac services, is rated number one in southern New Jersey for heart surgery and angioplasty by HealthGrades, a leading, national health care quality rating service. The St. Mary Heart Center, which has also received a five-star rating from HealthGrades for their cardiac intervention procedures, performed over 4,500 cardiac catheterizations, 400 open-heart operations and 1,100 procedures to diagnose and treat irregular heartbeats in 2003. St. Mary Medical Center and the Lourdes Health System are both members of Catholic Health East, one of the largest health care systems in the United States.

According to Dr. Richard T. Leshner, chief of the Cardiology Section at St. Mary, one of the key points the two organizations are emphasizing is that no single factor - not diet, or exercise, or even the cholesterol-lowering class of drugs called statins - can help you maintain a healthy heart. "Maintaining a healthy heart is about living a healthy lifestyle," said Dr. Jan R. Weber, Chief of the Division of Cardiology at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center and Medical Director of The New Jersey Heart Institute at Lourdes. "Fortunately we know more about that today than ever before," Dr. Weber added.

"As leaders in the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease in this region it is incumbent upon us to help people stay well, as well as to care for them when they are sick. This program enables us to do that on a very broad scale," said Alexander Hatala, President and CEO of Lourdes Health System.

The Lourdes Health System consists of Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, in Camden, New Jersey and Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County in Willingboro, New Jersey. St. Mary Medical Center is situated on a 53-acre campus in Langhorne, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

"This is St. Mary Medical Center's second year in bringing a program of this type to the region," said Gregory T. Wozniak, President and CEO of St. Mary Medical Center. "Not unlike other communities in the country, the area we serve is experiencing significant growth in its Baby Boomer and senior populations. The HeadsUp program is aimed at communicating very helpful cardiac information in a simple, engaging way and is effective in supporting our continuing efforts to promote healthy communities."

Wozniak added, "It's an ambitious program that we could not have undertaken without the support of our physicians, as well as the help of our supermarket partners and the brands who participated with their ads and coupons."

Source: St. Mary Medical Center