Choose Your Membership

Navigate Heart Health is a private, clinician-led online community for people recovering from a heart attack, stent placement, or coronary artery bypass surgery, as well as the family members and friends supporting them.

There are two ways to join:

The Cardiovascular Resilience Membership provides expert nutrition guidance, personalized meal planning, cardiac rehab support, practical tools, and connection with others who understand life after a cardiac event.

The Supporters Circle Membership provides guidance, resources, and community for people helping someone they love through recovery.

Together, these memberships provide ongoing support for the lifestyle changes, emotional challenges, and everyday decisions during the first years of recovery, when lifestyle change has the greatest impact on long-term heart health outcomes.

Cardiovascular resilience is your heart and blood vessels’ ability to handle the demands of daily life, recover from stress, and adapt over time.

Wherever you are starting from, you can build the strength, healthy routines, confidence, and support system that aid recovery after a cardiac event, protect your long-term heart health, and help you keep living an active, meaningful life.

Secondary prevention refers to the medical and lifestyle interventions used to reduce the risk of a second cardiovascular event in people who have already experienced one — such as a heart attack, stroke, stent placement, or bypass surgery. It is distinct from primary prevention, which focuses on reducing risk in people who have not yet had a cardiovascular event. Secondary prevention typically includes medications such as statins, aspirin, and blood pressure treatments, combined with lifestyle modifications including a heart-healthy diet, regular physical activity, smoking cessation, stress management, and weight management. Cardiac rehabilitation is one of the most evidence-based secondary prevention interventions available. Navigate Heart Health is built around supporting secondary prevention through sustainable lifestyle change.

This is one of the most common questions people have after a cardiac event, and a completely understandable thing to want to know.

The honest answer is that life expectancy after a heart attack or bypass surgery varies enormously depending on individual factors - the extent of heart muscle damage, the presence of other conditions like diabetes or kidney disease, age, whether the person smokes, and perhaps most importantly, what happens in the months and years following the event.

What the research consistently shows is this: the lifestyle choices made after a cardiac event have a significant and measurable impact on long-term survival. People who complete cardiac rehabilitation, adopt a heart-healthy dietary pattern, manage their blood pressure and cholesterol, stay physically active, and maintain a strong social support network have meaningfully better outcomes than those who do not. These are not small differences, studies show that cardiac rehabilitation alone is associated with a 20 to 30 percent reduction in cardiovascular mortality.

In other words: while no one can give you a specific number, the trajectory of your recovery is not fixed. The choices you make in the first year after a cardiac event, when motivation is highest and the body is most responsive to change, have an outsized influence on where that trajectory goes.

If you are looking for support in making the most of this critical window, Navigate Heart Health was built for exactly this moment.

After a heart attack, focus on building a heart-healthy way of eating that you can maintain over time. A Mediterranean-style eating pattern has especially strong evidence for people with established coronary heart disease.

It emphasizes vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, nuts, olive oil, fish, and other minimally processed foods, while limiting processed meats, excess saturated fat, added sugar, and sodium. DASH and well-planned plant-forward eating patterns can also be excellent choices and share many of the same foundations.

Your healthcare team may recommend a specific sodium target, particularly if you are managing high blood pressure, heart failure, or another medical condition.

Inside Navigate Heart Health, members receive step-by-step Mediterranean diet education, personalized meal plans through EatLove, practical help with groceries, restaurants, and everyday meals, and ongoing guidance to make this way of eating fit their preferences, schedule, and lifestyle.

Navigate Heart Health was founded and is led by Melanie McAuliffe, RDN, LD, CCRP — a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Cardiac Rehabilitation Professional. Melanie works in hospital-based cardiac rehabilitation and inpatient clinical nutrition, and brings her direct clinical experience to every aspect of the community. She is actively present in the community, answering questions, providing guidance, and updating content as the evidence evolves.

No. Navigate Heart Health is an educational and community support resource and is not a substitute for medical care, cardiac rehabilitation, or the guidance of your healthcare providers. Melanie McAuliffe is a Registered Dietitian and Certified Cardiac Rehabilitation Professional, but her role within Navigate Heart Health is that of an educator and community guide, not a treating clinician. Members are encouraged to work closely with their cardiologist, primary care provider, cardiac rehabilitation team, and other healthcare professionals throughout their recovery. Any specific medical questions or concerns should be directed to your treating providers. Navigate Heart Health is designed to complement and support — not replace — the care you receive from your medical team.