Prof Clare Arnott is a cardiologist and researcher, dedicated to advancing global health outcomes in cardiovascular disease, with a focus on addressing inequities in women. Evidence suggests that women are under-diagnosed, under-treated, and under-researched. Australian women are much less likely to have heart health checks than men, and if they have a heart attack are twice as likely to die. Her research is about trying to close those gaps, in particular for women at high risk, such as those from minority groups or disadvantaged communities.
Clare is particularly focused on how we can get more out of preventive care, leveraging existing systems with which women regularly engage.
Her team is focused on identifying novel ways to identify women at risk of heart disease. Women attend breast screening at greater rates than they attend heart health screening, with 30 times more mammograms performed than heart health checks. Prof Arnott’s team has developed a world-first way of using mammograms to identify who might also be at risk of heart disease. They use machine learning to re-analyse the mammograms and can now predict a woman’s risk of heart disease, as well as their risk of cancer, from the same test. This means we can screen more women in a way that is convenient for them and efficient for the health system.