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Cardiovascular disease has long been the No. 1 killer of both men and women older than 20, claiming more lives per year than all forms of cancer combined, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Yet decades of gender disparity in research, prevention and health care have left women at a disadvantage.

Compared to men, women are less likely to recognize cardiovascular disease as their leading cause of death, know the symptoms of a heart attack or receive aggressive diagnosis and treatment, according to the American Heart Association.

Heart disease and stroke took the lives of nearly 400,000 U.S. women in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent available data. That’s one in three female deaths — breast cancer causes one in 31.

But the AHA has made notable progress toward reversing these trends since launching its Go Red For Women initiative in 2004.

Go Red For Women not only raises awareness about cardiovascular disease in the female population, but also in the medical community, by providing women-specific treatment guidelines, pushing for equal gender representation in clinical trials and much more, said Brianne Harman, communications director of the AHA’s central Ohio division.

“Through outreach directly from Go Red For Women, roughly 293 fewer women die each day from heart disease and stroke,” Harman said, adding that since 1997, awareness among women that cardiovascular disease is their No. 1 health threat has increased from 26 percent to 56 percent.

Awareness among African-American and Hispanic women is significantly lower, according to the AHA.

And since 80 percent of cardiovascular disease is preventable through education and lifestyle change, Harman said, awareness is key.

“As an African-American female, it is a badge of honor to lead the charge toward heart disease research and preventive care,” said Kimberly Blackwell, CEO of PMM Agency and chair of the 2017 Go Red For Women in Columbus.

One way Go Red raises awareness is through National Wear Red Day, which is held the first Friday in February, falling this year on Feb. 3. More than 2,000 U.S. landmarks will light up red, including Columbus City Hall.

Columbus will host its 13^th Go Red For Women luncheon on Feb. 23 at the Hyatt Regency Columbus, as one of 180 Go Red luncheons across the country, Harman said.

The top risk factors for cardiovascular disease are high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking, according to the CDC. Other risks include poor diet, lack of exercise and excessive alcohol use.

“Your family history is another thing that should definitely be discussed because that’s a big risk factor, and one that you can’t control,” she added.

Another issue is that women are more likely than men to experience nontraditional heart-attack symptoms, such as jaw pain, neck/back pain, pain down one side of the arm, nausea and fatigue, among others.

Misunderstanding these signals can lead to delays in diagnosis and treatment, Harman said. Fewer women survive their first heart attack than men, according to the CDC.

But advances are on the horizon.

The AHA has set a goal of reducing death and disability from cardiovascular disease and strokes in Americans by 20 percent by the year 2020.

The organization is on track to meeting the goal, with a decrease in deaths and disabilities every year since 2010, with the exception of 2016, Harman said.

And after a push for more gender-specific research, the FDA is now required to report on how many clinical trial results are documented by gender. The AHA has given more than $3.3 billion to cardiovascular-disease research — second only to the U.S. government.

Get involved in Go Red For Women by registering with the initiative at goredforwomen.org.

This story was originally published in The Columbus Dispatch’s Go Red For Women special section on Feb. 1, 2017.

A campfire crackles underneath a glowing crescent moon — or right in the middle of your living room.

While more and more homeowners have been extending their living space by covering and/or furnishing their porches, patios, decks and backyards, there is a new trend to look ‘out’ for in 2017, said Earl Lee, director of environmental design at Columbus-based architecture firm Moody Nolan.

That trend is to mix outdoor elements directly into the home— a concept that lies at the heart of an exhibit created by designers from Moody Nolan, as well as students from The Ohio State University and Columbus College of Art and Design.

“So you may find more natural materials like stone, grass and water,” Lee said. “Really the trend centers on making the walls of the house more transparent, so that the inside-outside transition is lessened.”

The exhibit includes four showrooms — a kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedroom —all of which infuse elements of nature within their design or decor.

The most obvious outdoor-indoor fusion — and what will likely be a visitor favorite — is the bedroom, which doubles as a treehouse that stands four feet off the ground. Other features include an outdoor shower, a half-inside, half-outside dining area, and an indoor fire pit.

“It can be very simple, such as having a few potted plants in select locations,” said Chris Humphrey, a fourth-year architecture and construction-systems management student at Ohio State who helped create the exhibit.

On the other end of the spectrum, some homeowners opt to install a “green wall,” or a wall that has a growing medium on the surface, which allows plant life such as mosses and vines to grow and survive indoors, Humphrey said.

“We go outside a lot when we’re children, but we don’t necessarily think that our interior design or living spaces can reflect that,” said Toby Katz, a fourth-year interior design student at CCAD who worked on the project. “But we hope that this show tells people that you can be inspired by plant life and animal shapes and things like that, and that you can show it in your home in a tasteful way.”

An additional area features custom wall coverings designed by each of the six students who worked on the exhibit.

Similar to how vinyl tiles mimic hardwood or stone through modern printing technology, wall coverings can also be made to resemble various textures and patterns.

“It was a way to showcase and explore our interests, while also showing people that you’re not bound to the options that you have in stores,” Humphrey said.

While the exhibit is certainly fun to look at, its core purpose is to demonstrate to homeowners the new and trendy ways that they can enhance their atmosphere.

“A lot of the things we’re doing are definitely doable. It’s just about putting them together in the right combination to make the space what you want it to be,” Lee said. “Sometimes where people fall short is simply having the idea to do it.”

This story was originally published in The Columbus Dispatch’s Spring Home & Garden Show special section on Feb. 17, 2017.

Small businesses supporting hundreds of local artisans

The inside of Glean, a small business in Columbus, Ohio, that sells items handmade by local artists from recycled and repurposed materials.

Some small businesses have taken entrepreneurship a step further by sourcing all of their products from local artisans, creating a robust network that celebrates local commerce.

With their diverse array of handmade and novelty items, these stores are essentially a one-stop shop for holiday gift buying and for supporting dozens of local merchants on Small Business Saturday, which is on Nov. 26.

One such retailer is Glean, a tiny, basement-level shop that’s flourishing with one-of-a-kind trinkets made from recycled and repurposed materials, all fashioned by local handcrafters, including jewelry, decor, trinkets and small furniture.

Dawn McCombs opened Glean on the corner of West First Avenue and North High Street in 2013. Following a 17-year teaching career, owning a small business was new territory for her.

“I just had this calling to go back to my creative roots,” McCombs said. “When you’ve been working for a long time, you sometimes become desensitized to what your passions really are, so I did some unearthing to find that.”

She initially stocked Glean with her own handmade goods as well as items made by about 10 of her friends. To procure additional merchandise she went to various craft shows to find interested local artists, such as Daisy Mae, who designs wine stoppers, bottle openers and other accessories with snippets of vintage maps.

Today, Glean sells handmade goods from 80 local crafters, said McCombs, who makes about 30 percent of the merchandise in the store. And because she personally selects her vendors, she knows details about each product, as well as the history of the maker.

“I think that helps, because in our society today we’ve lost that element a little bit,” she said. “It’s a bit of nostalgia that we don’t get anymore, like back in the olden days when you’d go to the baker or the butcher.”

A similar store practically shouts its business philosophy through its name — Celebrate Local, which transitioned from a farmer’s market in the parking lot of Easton Town Center into a year-round storefront at the mall in 2011.

Celebrate Local represents more than 300 Ohio farmers, artisans and entrepreneurs, said Lynn Stan, co-owner of the store, which opened a second location in Cincinnati in 2015. The shop sells everything from apparel and accessories to health and beauty products to food and wine.

“Small businesses are so important to the well-being of a community — economically, socially, culturally — but sometimes they’re not as loud as other companies,” Stan said, describing Celebrate Local as an “entree for small business.”

The value in buying local is that it keeps more money in Ohio’s economy, Stan said.

“It’s important for people with big purchasing power to buy local, to keep money from leaving the community,” Stan said. “A community begins with small business, and Celebrate Local is about remembering the little folks.”

Simply Vague, another retailer that sells Ohio-made products, began weaving a web of local artisans in Delaware in 2012. The small business has since opened two stores in Tuttle Mall and Polaris Shopping Center, said Andrea Archibald, who owns the store with her husband, Nate Archibald.

The store sells Ohio-themed products from roughly 250 local artisans, including apparel, home decor and jewelry.

The two lived in Ostrander before starting the business.

“There’s not many places to shop from out there, and we have always liked shopping locally, so we were driving really far to get everything,” Andrea Archibald said. “So we decided to house everything under one roof and make it more accessible to shop local.”

When the couple opened the original Simply Vague in Delaware (now closed), they were working in real estate and had no visions of the store becoming their full-time job. “We had no retail background,” Archibald said.

Now the two are managing five stores throughout Ohio, three of which are spin-off stores called The Direction.

McCombs, Stan and Archibald each expressed a high regard for their vendors.

“It’s become more than just a store they sell in; it’s become a network of people who are there to help each other,” said Archibald, who started a community-based organization in 2015 called Ohio Creative Collective, which connects Ohio-based small business owners, artists, authors and entrepreneurs through monthly events. She also runs the Made Local Marketplace Show, which takes place four times a year in Columbus and features more than 100 local artisans.

“A lot of the people that I’ve talked to think that it must cost so much money to start your own business, but there are ways around that if you’re creative enough,” McCombs added. “Find what your passion is and start off in little markets. You can’t fail if you’re doing something that you love.”

This story was originally published in The Columbus Dispatch’s 2016 Big Book of Savings on Nov. 20, 2016. 

Local gift shops gearing up for the end of the year

While most large retailers look forward to and rely on extra profits from the holiday season, the end of the year can make or break a small business.

In 2010, American Express recognized a need to counter the huge sales going to retail chains on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and created Small Business Saturday, a day dedicated to buying from small businesses. This year, Small Business Saturday falls on Nov. 26.

Whereas big-box retailers hire extra employees for the holidays, many small business owners pick up the increased workload on their own, including Mike Renner and Heather Ziegler, who own What The Rock?!, a 250-square-foot gift boutique in the Short North with an eccentric array of rock-and-roll-themed novelty items.

“Store hours are 1 to 7 p.m., but we’re usually working around the clock,” Renner said.

The story is the same for Josh and Niki Quinn, who own Tigertree, an apparel and gift shop in the Short North.

“At this point we’re always working, and even during any meal out with my wife and I, 99 percent of the conversation is work related,” Josh Quinn said.

Despite obstacles, What The Rock?! and Tigertree have both successfully sustained their stores for 10 years.

“We’ve seen a decade of consistent but slow growth, which I think serves us well because sometimes going slow is the best thing that you can do for your business,” Quinn said. “And I think Niki and I are both pretty resourceful. We’re good at learning on the fly.”

What The Rock?! brings in more than 25 percent of its business revenue from mid November through December, making it crucial to the business’ survival, Renner said. To make up for the dip in revenue during the remainder of the year, he and Ziegler sell their products and promote their store at various craft shows, music festivals and street fairs.

For Wholly Craft, a gift shop in Clintonville that sells handmade items from more than 400 vendors, the holidays constitute 35-40 percent of annual sales, said owner Olivera Bratich.

“We carry things all year round that are great to get for loved ones, but the holidays are the one time of year that you have to shop for 25 of your loved ones all at one time,” Bratich said. “So we spend a lot of time and energy making sure that we have a terrific selection from our crafters and designers.”

Wholly Crafts’ best-selling item is an Ohio-shaped cutting board, Bratich said, but the store is filled with miscellaneous merchandise, much of which is meant to be comical, like grenade-shaped hand soap and a coffee mug that reads, “Britney survived 2007. You can handle today.”

Similar off-the-wall items can be found at Tigertree, including unicorn or squirrel-shaped cookie cutters, paint-your-own-phone-case kits and earrings in the shape of tiny sriracha hot sauce bottles.

One of What The Rock?!’s best sellers is its line of whimsical baby onesies, Renner said. The onesies feature bands such as The Ramones, The Rolling Stones and Guns and Roses, and others have comical phrases such as ‘I still live with my parents.’

Also popular is the jewelry that Ziegler handcrafts, including guitar-pick earrings and “rock and rollsaries” (rosaries) picturing assorted music icons, such as John Lennon and Bob Marley.

Handcrafted guitar-pick earrings are just one of the unique gift items shoppers can find at Columbus, Ohio-based What The Rock?! Other fun products include onesies for babies with catchy phrases as well as “rock and rollsaries,” rosaries featuring pictures of iconic musicians.

“We find that at least 50 percent of people who come in during the holidays buying a gift also get something for themselves,” Renner said.

Regardless of the hard work, Renner, Bratich and Quinn all said they love what they do.

“We get to be our own bosses, and I get to deal with what I love — rock and roll,” Renner said.

“It’s a spread of ideas, a spread of aesthetics that I’m happy to be a part of,” Bratich said. “It’s been a great experience to sort of be invested in a community for so long and to see the growth and change in our customers.“

This story was originally published in The Columbus Dispatch’s 2016 Big Book of Savings on Nov. 20, 2016. 

Doug and his late wife, Laura.

Amid a month of pink ribbons, feel-good stories and advertisements with smiling cancer patients, it’s easy to forget the millions of lives that are claimed by cancer each year.

And among death’s sickening array of characters, cancer is one of the cruelest.

Doug Alsdorf, professor at The Ohio State University, knows this reality all too well after losing his wife, Laura Behrendt-Alsdorf, to metastatic breast cancer in 2011.

It’s hard to talk about death. Most people avoid talking about death in the public sphere because death can’t be dressed up — not even in pink ribbons.

But Alsdorf will never forget or avoid discussing the bravery with which Laura — his soul mate and mother of his only child — faced death during her experience with breast cancer.

“In the face of pretty much everyone’s No. 1 fear, Laura did not cower,” he said. “She never said, ‘why me.’ She was courageous and resolute.”

It was a long, painful process for Alsdorf to say goodbye to Laura and accept that his life course has been altered on a profound level. But he is moving ahead with new dreams, goals, hobbies and passions — such as joining the fight to end cancer.

At the core of the fight against cancer is an unyielding drive powered by love, loss and hope — an arsenal that’s fortified by science and medicine. Alsdorf and Laura’s brother, Don Behrendt, are feeding that arsenal with the Laura J. Behrendt-Alsdorf Endowment Fund at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. The fund has accumulated $120,000 thus far, and it benefits Dr. Sameek Rowchowdhury, who works on the genetic typing of cancer cells.

Shortly after Laura died, Alsdorf started to find some small comfort in blogging his personal thoughts about Laura, their life together and how he’s been coping without her.

His newfound love of writing is here to stay.

Alsdorf is 50,000 words into a book he plans to publish about Laura and “life, love, death and dating,” the proceeds of which benefit the fund at the James. He’s also working on another nonfiction book and a sci-fi novel.

“Everyone should create. Be a painter, a sculptor; play music,” he said. “I can’t do any of those things very well. But writing I can do. Everybody can write. Everybody has a story.”

He and Laura’s story began at Ohio State in Siebert Hall, where they were living as a resident advisor and graduate student, respectively. Ten years of friendship and romance later, they got married in 2001. Two years later, they welcomed their son, Garrett, into the world.

“She was in love with me and I was in love with her,” Alsdorf said. “Together, we loved Garrett.”

It was on May 17, 2011, that Laura’s story came to an early end at 43 years old.

She stood no chance in her six-year fight with breast cancer, but she won the battle in a different way — by living fully and passionately through it all.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in business marketing from Ohio State and, with her husband’s encouragement, an MBA from USC. The height of her career was spent at Mattel, a major toy manufacturing company. Laura’s spunky personality and love of the toy industry and automotive racing made her the perfect person to help oversee toy lines within Hot Wheels, Alsdorf said.

She was an avid diver, spoke French and had a great love for traveling. She made a point to keep exploring the world through her final days — her last trip was to Turks and Caicos with her family and friends, just six weeks before she died.

“She did all of that and so much more, all the while knowing that she was going to die young,” Alsdorf said. “She never let cancer define her nor a single day of her life.”

As it is inscribed on her tombstone, “cancer took Laura’s body, but it never touched her spirit.”

Laura’s memory will always be alive in Alsdorf and Garrett — who’s now 13 — and her selfless love continues to inspire them.

“I am so deeply grateful that Laura chose to love me,” Alsdorf said. “Her love now brings me peace.”

The original story was published in The Columbus Dispatch’s 2016 Pink Papers special section.