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

Shari Belafonte is wearing her heart on her sleeve. 

The Morning Show actress, 69, arrived at the 2024 SAG Awards in a custom-made vibrant look by designer Aneka Brown that celebrated her partnership with the American Heart Association.

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

“Harry lived a very fulfilled life with helping everybody else, and there were no regrets. So when he passed at 96, there were no huge tears," she says. "We knew that he had completed his journey on this planet and each one of his children had something to bring, hopefully, as part of his legacy in different areas. Mine is making people aware of health education.”

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

There’s a third good reason why she enjoys wearing the vibrant hue, too.

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

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

“Once you can start to vote, you should be able to start taking care of yourself,” she says. “Almost half of women over the age of 20 have some kind of cardiovascular disease, and we just don't pay attention to it. I do! I happen to love my doctors. So even though I happen to have a really high cholesterol count, I do get my heart scanned and make sure that I have zero plaque. I definitely check all the things that you should check, but heart disease is the number one killer of women, more than all the cancers combined.”

While she makes sure to never miss a yearly check up at the doctor, Belafonte says there are so many other, even smaller ways that people can take charge of their heart health, too.

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“Taking these moments to really consider de-stressing, whether it's yoga or it's Tai Chi or it's sitting and meditating, stress awareness is equally as important, I think, as doing your cardiovascular workouts: walking, swimming if you can,” she says. “Exercise is important, eating healthily is important. All the things that we've heard before: less in the potato chip bag — although I have to confess, I'm a big Ruffles fan.” 

So, while nobody is perfect, Belafonte hopes to show that just talking about heart disease is key, and for those who want to take their activism step further, learning CPR is a great place to start. 

“A lot of people don't realize that [for] women who get heart attacks, people are reluctant to try CPR on them. They're afraid, I don't know if tits are a problem, [but] they're just reluctant to get involved or try to help resuscitate and keep the heart going until the medics can get there," she says. "But that's one of the things, learning CPR, and obviously, if somebody's having distress, not being afraid to jump in there and take care of it.” 

She adds: "It's an important endeavor to make sure that people understand they need to take care of themselves first, before they can take care of anybody else.”