Veteran entertainer Barbra Streisand is stepping up her drive to end heart disease in women by fronting a new campaign urging fellow females to report symptoms to their doctor.

The singer/actress is a longtime campaigner on the issue and set up the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles in 2012 in a bid to improve standards of care and promote early diagnosis.

Streisand has now launched a new awareness campaign called Fight the Ladykiller, which encourages women to discuss their symptoms with their doctor and demand to be taken seriously.

She tells USA Today, "More women than men have died of heart disease each year since 1984... Heart disease kills more women than all cancers combined... It's very frustrating. We are still treated like second-class citizens. It's like our lives are not as important as men's... If a woman doesn't present like a man (she will not be taken as seriously)... If women have symptoms, they don't have to be the Hollywood heart attack - the chest pain and the left arm pain."