Campaign patron - Dame Jenny Shipley

Dame Jenny shares her thoughts and goals for improving the heart health of New Zealand women:

This year Go Red for Women  is focusing on raising money to support New Zealand based research that will prevent heart disease for New Zealand women in the future.  So much research worldwide focuses on male populations, and New Zealand has many unique attributes.  We now have a professor of heart health at Auckland University, having funds that allow he and others to focus on female research that is relevant to the New Zealand women is just a top priority and I hope you will give us your support.

We have set an ambitious target of $4m as part of a $20m preventative heart health research pool.  Go Red for Women is a step towards realising this goal. We intend to raise the money through a variety of strategies but right now we are  asking all New Zealanders, women and men, to give $3 for each of the women they love in order to make a contribution to this fund, we are going to have a terrific online capability and we hope that you will pass this through to your network to make sure that we reach our target. 

I was fortunate to survive a heart attack when I was 48, I wear dreadful genes in terms of my family’s history and so I am conscious that I need to do what I can to keep myself well and also to keep other women well. 

I feel very privileged to be able to give my time and energy to a project that really can make a difference for New Zealand women.  In my previous life I had the pleasure of introducing breast screening which has saved the lives of many women for the number two killer of New Zealand women today.  I have now turned my mind to the number one killer of New Zealand women and I hope you will help me raise the money necessary to see that the Go Red campaign does have a pool of funds that will allow New Zealand specific research into heart disease in New Zealand women be available to our lead researchers, and in doing so save lives of New Zealand women in the future.  It is my hope that every New Zealand women will find a way to support the Go Red campaign.

If everyone does a little, an enormous amount will get done, if everyone gives a small amount the target can be reached.  I am quite convinced that every New Zealand adult, woman or man, if they thought about the numbers of women who mean the world to them and gave $3 or more for each of them we would very quickly reach our target.

Again, thanks so much for your support of this wonderful cause, and it is always important to remember heart disease is the largest killer of New Zealand women today.