IOWA, June 1 ? To reach its goal of educating 1 million Americans about CPR during CPR Week (June 1-7), the American Heart Association is calling on a new audience -- teens.
"We are reaching out to teens to create the next generation of lifesavers," said Michael Sayre, M.D., chairman of the American Heart Association's Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee. "Teens can learn how to save lives and play an important role by setting an example for their friends, families and neighbors about the need for CPR and AED training -- and they can encourage the adults in their lives to learn CPR."
During CPR Week, the association will increase awareness about CPR and automated external defibrillators (AEDs) so more people will know the simple steps to save a life if someone suddenly collapses from cardiac arrest.
Anyone - teen or adult - can help the association reach its goal by:
· Playing the "Be the Beat" educational game or watching the Hands-Only CPR video at cprweek.org
· Taking a classroom-based course. To find a course, go to americanheart.org/cpr and click on the ECC Class Connector.
· Training on CPR Anytime, a self-directed, at-home CPR kit. Kits can be ordered at cpranytime.org
Once people have learned about CPR via traditional instructor-led training or a CPR Anytime kit, they can log their experience at CPRweek.org. People who play the educational game or watch the Hands-Only video on the CPR Week site will be automatically counted toward the goal. A real-time heat map will track the number of people who have taken action in communities nationwide.
The association recently expanded its outreach to teens with Be the Beat, a program that encourages teens to learn what to do when someone collapses from cardiac arrest. Visitors to BeTheBeat.heart.org learn the basics of CPR and how to use an AED through a series of video games and interactive quizzes. There's also a playlist of 100-beat-per-minute songs to set the right pace for chest compressions.
Sudden cardiac arrest can strike anyone, anywhere. And when it does, a victim's survival depends on the people around them. Skilled emergency personnel treat about 300,000 victims of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest in the United States, but more than 92 percent of people who suffer cardiac arrest outside the hospital die from it.
Training more people to perform CPR - in its 50th year as a lifesaving measure -- increases survival by enabling more possible bystanders to handle an emergency. Less than one-third of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims receive CPR from a bystander. Without immediate CPR, the chance of surviving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest drops up to 10 percent for each minute that passes without defibrillation. This means that by the time EMS personnel arrive on the scene it could be too late.
"CPR and AED training are critical to saving lives," Sayre said. "CPR Week is one way we hope to increase awareness about cardiac arrest as a significant health problem and get teens and adults to take action so more lives can be saved."
For more information about CPR Week, visit CPRweek.org.
