Barbra Streisand Raised MILLIONS For Cedars-Sinai Heart Disease Center!

Nothing like EXCEEDING your goal — especially when your goal is for a cardiovascular program at Cedars-Sinai, and you exceed it by $2 million!

Not to mention that the goal was $20 million to begin with!

The center is now re-named the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center!

Here's what the director of the program had to say:

“Barbra has now brought over $22 million to this cause, including her own generous gift of $10 million in matching funds."

Holy shizz! That's awesome!

Here's what Barbra had to say:

"Women need to be educated about female cardiovascular disease, and the medical community must be propelled toward change. Just like with breast cancer, the impetus must come from women themselves striving to become empowered to reduce their risks for heart disease.

"I consider myself a well-informed person, but when I heard these facts, I was stunned. Very few people know this. And until recently, almost no one talked about or paid attention to an epidemic that women are dying from throughout the world."

She's referring to the fact that more than 500,000 women die each year in the U.S. from cardiovascular disease — exceeding all the female deaths by cancer — and most research had been done on men.

There are differences between men and women, as you know.

So the money Streisand has raised goes not just to research and treatment but to educational programs and prevention efforts as well. These will help men as well as women.

She continued:

"Heart research done on women also helps men as well. Take stem cell research, for example. Recently, Dr. Merz and I were talking about the work of a colleague who is trying to grow the first human heart in a petri dish. She had a breakthrough in her study when she found out that using only female stem cells was the solution. She discovered that using male stem cells didn’t work; they got totally lost. And, as we know, men — even male stem cells — won't ask for directions.

"Joking aside, the heart is an amazing organ, and first and foremost we need to focus on prevention. Women’s lives are becoming increasingly demanding as they juggle the responsibilities of being wife, mother and helping to support the family. We need to take better care of ourselves. We need to slow down, reduce stress, eat better, make time to exercise … because the heart is a precious organ that needs to be protected."

Freakin' amazing!

We LOVE how involved she is in all of this — and we're so happy she exceeded her goal!

Barbra is totally an inspiration!

[Image via WENN.]

Tags: amazing, awesome, barbra streisand, breast cancer, cancer, disease, exercise, family, happy, heart, medical, million, research, study, support, treatment, women