How Shari Belafonte Honored Dad Harry Belafonte with Her Look at the 2024 SAG Awards (Exclusive)

PEOPLE caught up with ‘The Morning Show’ star teaming up with the American Heart Association to help raise awareness of cardiovascular disease

Shari Belafonte wears her heart on her sleeve.

Morning show The 69-year-old actress arrived at the 2024 SAG Awards in a vibrant custom edition by designer Aneka Brown that celebrated her partnership with the American Heart Association.

Belafonte’s father — beloved singer, actor and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte — died last April of congestive heart failure, and Belafonte tells PEOPLE she’s determined to carry on his legacy by continuing to raise awareness about cardiovascular disease. (Harry was nominated during the In Memoriam segment at Sunday’s ceremony.)

“Harry lived a very full life helping everyone else and there were no regrets. So when he passed away at the age of 96, there were no big tears,” she says. “We knew that he had finished his journey on this planet and that each of his children had something to bring, hopefully, as part of their legacy to in different areas. Mine is to make people aware of health education.”

Harry Belafonte and Shari Belafonte at the opening night reception for Shari Belafonte’s ITALY exhibition at Chair and The Maiden on October 7, 2010 in New York City.

Michael N. Todaro/FilmMagic

One of the easiest ways to spread the word about heart disease is to wear red, especially during February. Belafonte says she wears red “a lot” in her everyday life because “it’s a signal for awareness of Native American women,” but especially during this month, she’s wearing red “for everything, especially women of color.”

There is a third good reason why she likes to wear a vibrant shade.

“I happen to think I look good in red!” she jokes. “But it’s really to raise awareness that our heart health is really important. And I have a family history of aunts and uncles, my mother died of pulmonary edema, which of course is part of the cardiovascular disease category, and my grandmother died of a heart attack, and I had friends and family who died of heart attacks and I think a lot of people they’re just not aware of good heart health.”

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The red coat that Belafonte rocked at the SAG Awards to help shift that paradigm was made just for her by designer Aneka Brown. Belafonte says it’s important to her to continue to emphasize that heart disease doesn’t discriminate based on age.

Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty

“Once you start voting, you should be able to take care of yourself,” she says. “Almost half of women over the age of 20 have some kind of cardiovascular disease, and we simply don’t pay attention to it. I want! I happen to love my doctors. So even though I happen to have very high cholesterol, I get a heart scan to make sure I don’t have plaque. I certainly check all the things you should check, but heart disease is the number one killer of women, more than all cancers combined.”

While she makes sure she never misses an annual doctor’s checkup, Belafonte says there are so many other, even smaller, ways people can take charge of their heart health.

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“Use these moments to really think about de-stressing, whether it’s yoga, tai chi or sitting and meditating, stress awareness is just as important, I think, as cardiovascular exercise: walking, swimming if you can,” he says. she. . “Exercise is important, healthy eating is important. Everything we’ve heard before: less in a bag of chips — although I have to admit, I’m a big fan of Ruffles.”

So while no one is perfect, Belafonte hopes to show that just talking about heart disease is key, and for those who want to take their activism a step further, learning CPR is a great place to start.

“A lot of people don’t realize that [for] women who have heart attacks, people are reluctant to try CPR on them. They are afraid, I don’t know if the nipples are a problem, [but] they’re just reluctant to step in or try to help with CPR and keep the heart going until the medics get there,” she says. “But that’s one of the things, learning CPR, and obviously, if someone’s in trouble, not being afraid to jump in there and take care for it.”

She adds, “It’s an important effort to make sure people understand that they have to take care of themselves first, before they can take care of anyone else.”

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Source: HIS Education