Heart disease is now the number one killer of both men and women in the United States – one out of every four deaths is related to heart disease. Each year, hundreds of thousands of Americans have a heart attack and find themselves in need of some sort of cardiac rehabilitation.

Raising awareness about good heart health is very important. It’s also important to make sure that our country has enough health providers to help patients with heart disease, which is why I’m cosponsoring a bill that allows physician assistants, nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists to supervise cardiac, intensive cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation programs.

As researchers and scientists continue to work on curing heart disease, I will work to make sure that those already affected have proper care and access to quality rehabilitation programs – even when doctors are unavailable to supervise.