Yesterday, The Washington Post published an article to encourage and empower individuals to learn CPR and help save a life while humming “Stayin’ Alive.” We are extremely grateful for their coverage, and I encourage you to read it here: http://wapo.st/1FG65Dv

Did you know 326,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur annually in the US and 70% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests happen in homes and residential settings, meaning the life you save is likely to be someone you love? Sadly, 90% of people who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests don’t survive. We want to change these statistics. If performed immediately, effective bystander CPR can double or triple a victim’s chance of survival.

Our Hands-Only CPR Campaign started as a way to teach individuals that anyone can learn how to save a life in just 60 seconds with two simple steps: call 911 and push hard and fast in the center of the chest to the beat of “Stayin’ Alive.” AHA updated its guidelines in 2010 and started this campaign because immediate bystander response is a critical link in the chain of survival.

In 2010, we set aggressive 10-year strategic goals to guide CPR & First Aid impact by 2020 to:

• Double all out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival and dramatically increase in-hospital cardiac arrest survival for adult (double) and pediatric (50%) patients.
• Double CPR bystander response rate, from 31% to 62%.

By achieving these goals we will save an additional 50,000 lives each year in the United States. We’re already making some great headway toward our goals, as survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest has already increased about 35% and bystander response rate has already increased by more than 45% according to the latest data.

But we still have a lot of work to do. By training more individuals in CPR, we’re putting more potential lifesavers in our community and in your homes!

Through support of the Anthem Foundation, we are well on our way to training millions of people in Hands-Only CPR. Learn today at heart.org/handsonlycpr.

Note from John: For World Health Day, I’ve asked my colleague Kathryn Taubert, PhD, FAHA, to write a guest blog post. Kathryn is our Vice President of Global Strategies working closely with our CEO, CMO, myself and other American Heart Association (AHA) senior leaders to collaborate and establish partnerships with international organizations to broaden the AHA’s support of and impact on global health. Kathryn enjoyed a 25-year career at AHA that began in 1985 as a Staff Scientist / Science Consultant before being promoted to Vice President, Science and Medicine and then ultimately advancing to Sr. Scientist and Special Asst. to the Chief Science Officer before joining the World Heart Federation in 2010.

Did you know that globally, more than 200 diseases are caused by unsafe food? This leads to millions of people falling ill due to contaminated food or drinking water and up to 2 million of them die as a result. If you live in the USA or another developed country, you may not think about food safety very often; unfortunately, it is a huge global issue.

That’s why this year’s World Health Day theme is “Food Safety”, and calls on producers, policy makers and the public to promote this important issue. The global health awareness day is sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) and has been celebrated annually since 1950 on April 7^th.

On World Health Day 2015, it is important to raise awareness of the issue of food safety. WHO asks us some pertinent questions, such as:

• What is in your meal?
• Where did the ingredients come from?
• Were they properly – and safely – handled from every stage, from farm to plate?

The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition wants to raise awareness that food safety is a worldwide issue and our food supply becomes more global every year.

Beyond this, we should ask ourselves if we really know what is in the food we purchase and consume. Even if food is free from contamination, is it “safe”?   Is it heart healthy?  Sometimes, that is a difficult question to answer.

People are consuming less fresh vegetables, fruits and whole grains and in the US and other parts of the world, there is more and more processed food being manufactured. Many of these foods are high in bad fats (saturated fat and trans fat), sugar and salt (sodium chloride). These ingredients can lead to weight gain, an increased risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, especially if consumed frequently.

When shopping for groceries, here are some helpful tips in making healthy food choices:

• Choose lean meats and poultry without skin and prepare them without added saturated and trans fat.
• Eat fish at least twice a week. Research shows that eating oily fish containing omega-3 fatty acids (for example, salmon, trout and herring) may help lower your risk of death from coronary artery disease.
• Select fat-free, 1 percent fat and low-fat dairy products.
• Cut back on foods containing partially hydrogenated vegetable oils to help reduce trans fat in your diet.
• To lower cholesterol, reduce saturated fat to no more than 5 to 6 percent of total calories. For someone eating 2,000 calories a day, that’s about 13 grams of saturated fat.
• Cut back on beverages and foods with added sugars.
• Choose and prepare foods with little or no salt (sodium chloride). Reducing sodium intake can help lower blood pressure.
• If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation. That means one drink per day if you’re a woman and two drinks per day if you’re a man.

To help you better understand commercially prepared food labels, the American Heart Association has some food labeling tips: http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/NutritionCenter/HealthyEating/Understanding-Food-Nutrition-Labels_UCM_300132_Article.jsp

Bon appétit and happy World Health Day!

– Kathryn Taubert, PhD

Spring is the perfect time to be outdoors with family and friends enjoying picnics, playgrounds and swimming in pools, especially as the temperature increases. While being near the pool is a great way to cool off, it can also bring dangerous situations like drowning. Knowing CPR and first aid can better prepare you for any situations that occur.

For Eli Thomas’s family, that situation came last August during a family trip to a relative’s home with a pool. Their 2-year-old son, Rhys, fell in the pool as he was exploring the backyard. Eli quickly pulled his son out by his ankles and gave him CPR he had remembered from an American Heart Association CPR training, a month earlier. In a few seconds, Eli had to put together everything he had learned to save his son. Rhys fully recovered from his near-drowning experience and now the Thomas family believes everyone should learn CPR.

“It is so easy to take a CPR course. And it is so important to do, so that in a moment of panic, you can still function,” Eli Thomas said.  (more…)

Today I am honored to announce that our Hands-Only CPR Campaign has been honored with two Gold Awards by Bulldog Reporter! The Bulldog Awards celebrate corporate communications and public relations strategic and tactical prowess at the highest level.

The two winning categories are Best Use of Digital/Social for a Health/Fitness/Medicine Campaign and Best Use of the Internet/Digital Tools.

Winners were chosen from hundreds of entries representing the very best strategic and tactical prowess that PR corporate communications has to offer. Campaigns were judged exclusively by working journalists, who assessed them on the basis of their ability to achieve extraordinary visibility and influence opinion, as well as on creativity, command of media and technology and tenacity.

We’re thrilled with these category wins, as they underscore the Hands-Only CPR team’s success in driving online actions to help reach our mission goals through compelling content creation and curation. Specifically, the strategy being recognized is the use of our familiar music platform, “Stayin’ Alive”, to build new exclusive digital assets that appeal to a broader demographic. A primary element was the Hands-Only CPR Mash-Up (above), which drove buzz among consumers and media, and our digital distribution and social media strategies drove views of the 2014 demo training video, particularly on our Facebook and Twitter properties.

Congratulations to the Hands-Only CPR team!

Many of you know that February is American Heart Month and today is National Wear Red Day. President Obama even helped kick start the annual awareness campaign against the nation’s No. 1 killer with a federal declaration. “My Administration is committed to leading a new era of medicine — one that delivers the right treatment at the right time — and to ensuring Americans live longer, healthier, more productive lives,” Obama wrote.

But this isn’t just a domestic issue. We have health data collected from nearly 200 countries that show heart disease remains the No. 1 global cause of death with 17.3 million deaths each year*. That number is expected to rise to more than 23.6 million by 2030, the report found.

On a positive note, fewer Americans have been dying of heart disease and stroke since the 1980s, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) deaths in the U.S. continued to drop from 2001 to 2011 by 30.8 percent. Much of the progress comes from better use of medical therapies in patients with a history of heart disease and stroke and from lifestyle changes that are curbing the risk. Learn more about the top CVD research advances here.

You may be wondering what these numbers mean to you, or how they affect you. They may not. But they likely affect someone you know now or will at some point in the future. For me, American Heart Month is personal. When I started at the American Heart Association (AHA) 25 years ago, nobody in my family had CVD. They didn’t even have the typical risk factors. Fast forward to today and the story is much different. My grandmother is a stroke survivor.  My father has metabolic syndrome. My mother has atrial fibrillation (AFib), and earlier this month I rushed my wife to the hospital with AFib.

Carolyn and I wearing red to support American Heart Month

Fortunately, my loved ones are alive and well. They’ve made great strides over the years to live healthier lives, and I like to think that our work at AHA has played a significant role along the way through awareness, education and funding of medical research.

Whether you do it for yourself or your loved ones, take 10 minutes during American Heart Month to visit mylifecheck.heart.org, a website where you can learn how to improve your health by following “Life’s Simple 7”.

*Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics — 2015 Update: A Report From the American Heart Association

Cardiovascular disease is a global issue, and currently accounts for more than 17 million deaths per year, a figure expected to reach approximately 25 million per year by 2030. At the American Heart Association (AHA), we believe everyone should live longer, healthier lives, free of cardiovascular diseases and stroke.

As part of this commitment, we have launched expanded, translated web content on international.heart.org in an effort to reach more people in more places with lifesaving information and training, delivered in eight languages: Arabic, English, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish.

(more…)

It’s an exciting week for AHA as we announce our latest healthcare offering that blends the latest science and technology to better support for hospitals and healthcare providers in their efforts to save more lives. We developed the AHA Resuscitation Quality Improvement Program (AHA RQI Program) to help healthcare providers maintain skill competency and achieve better patient outcomes through regular, low-dose/high-frequency high-quality CPR training. Check out this video to learn more about this new training solution that I expect will be a game-changer in the resuscitation education space.

Our research has shown that psychomotor skills related to resuscitation can decay within just three to six months – far before the two-year standard when basic and advanced life support skills are currently evaluated. The 2013 AHA Consensus Statement, “Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Quality: Improving Cardiac Resuscitation Outcomes Both Inside and Outside the Hospital” states that poor-quality CPR leads to poor patient outcomes creating a “preventable harm” to the patient.

We created RQI to teach healthcare providers high-quality CPR in a more effective, concise and convenient way that drives them to practice and retain these skills with confidence. The subscription-based training program provides the same cognitive and skills modules as a traditional CPR training program, but delivers it quarterly rather than every two years to ensure resuscitation skills remain at the highest standard.

Early adopters include Texas Health Resources, UT Southwestern Dallas and University of Alabama at Birmingham. “We chose RQI because we believe the conversion to maintenance of competency will drive quality resuscitation and deliver better patient outcomes. Using RQI, our staff can achieve higher CPR proficiency in less time, for less cost, and with better skill retention,” said Michael Kurz, M.D. M.S., associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine and member of the AHA’s Emergency Cardiovascular Care committee Systems of Care subcommittee.

RQI is the next evolution of dynamic CPR training, bringing the latest learning technology and simulation stations directly to the provider. We are excited to expand our RQI program beyond the pilot phase, and more importantly, improve patient outcomes across the country.

Did you know that 6.3 MILLION children around the world die every year before they reach their fifth birthday, often from common, preventable and treatable illnesses like pneumonia, diarrhea and other infections? And that more than 20% of those deaths occur in India – 1.26 MILLION children this year? These are startling statistics we find unacceptable, especially when quick and correct treatment can make the difference in whether these children live or die.

That is where the American Heart Association’s science and knowledge can help. We have the research and training to make a difference, and are working to share the solutions that we’ve implemented domestically in other countries to save more lives.

Today, I’m honored to announce the Saving Children’s Lives: India program and campaign. Using our very own Pediatric Emergency Assessment, Recognition and Stabilization (PEARS^®) training materials, this pilot program aims to train community and in-hospital healthcare providers in Gujarat, India in the skills needed to treat illnesses that lead to mortality in children under five. The additional training of new instructors will ensure sustainability that can create a positive effect throughout India.

We know this training works. Saving Children’s Lives programs in Botswana and Tanzania have trained hundreds of healthcare providers to successfully identify and treat the most common illnesses that lead to Under Five Mortality.

The AHA has been working internationally for decades to extend our impact into more countries, and we join many other governmental and non-governmental organizations, healthcare providers and people around the world in this effort to save the lives of children.

We are grateful to our generous supporter, Impelsys, who has committed to match the first $25,000 in donations. With this match, your donation can essentially double!

I’m asking each of you two take two minutes and do two things:

1. Visit the crowdfunding page and donate at your comfort level. We are offering tokens of our thanks at each level.
2. Commit spreading this message to five friends. The more who know about this issue, the more people who can make a difference.

Every child deserves to live a long healthy life, no matter where they live. I urge you, my friends, family, and colleagues, to pledge a donation on our Saving Children’s Lives crowdfunding site today. Our fundraising goal is ambitious but we can achieve this with your help.

Because… Life is Why.

In the 2010 AHA Guidelines for CPR & ECC, the latest scientific research emphasized chest compressions as a key component of CPR in the Chain of Survival. Recently, I learned about one of our team’s first-hand accounts of saving someone’s life because he performed high-quality CPR with proper chest compressions. I hope you find this story as inspiring as I did.

Working as an emergency room nurse, Jeremy Dymond had performed lifesaving CPR countless times during his career. But it was a patient with a pulmonary embolism who showed Jeremy just how crucial high quality chest compressions – the cornerstone of successful CPR – can be in saving a life.

A patient in his mid-40s was complaining of chest pain and difficulty breathing, and paramedics alerted the emergency team at Methodist Charlton Medical Center as they were in route. Just as the man was being taken out of the ambulance, he went into cardiac arrest. Working with a team of a half dozen staff from the hospital’s Emergency Department, Dymond began performing chest compressions to keep the blood pumping to vital organs, making sure to press deep enough and fast enough to be effective.

After about a minute-and-a-half of compressions, the patient’s heart restarted, and the team began preparing to move the man up to the hospitals intensive care unit. Less than two minutes later, his heart stopped again. After another minute-and-a-half, the patient was revived, only to go into cardiac arrest a few minutes later.  It was an unusual, and frustrating pattern that repeated itself five times before the patient was stabilized. A CT Angiography scan revealed the patient had experienced a massive, but single pulmonary embolism, which blocked the two arterial branches leading to the lungs and caused the cardiac arrest.

Jeremy Dymond and his daughter, Kayla Graham.

The patient was able to leave the hospital two weeks later without any adverse damage to his organs or brain function, nursing only broken ribs. The experience underscores the importance of high-quality CPR, which prioritizes compressions that occur deeply and quickly enough. Research has shown that effectiveness of CPR can be improved when good technique is employed.

More than a half-million children and adults suffer cardiac arrest each year in the United States, but survival rates vary widely – from 3 percent to 16 percent – when cardiac arrest occurs outside a hospital, and from 12 percent to 22 percent when it occurs in a hospital.

“If I hadn’t compressed deep enough, the patient likely would have died,” said Dymond, who now works as a Senior Product Manager for AHA’s Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) and Pediatric Emergency Assessment, Recognition, and Stabilization (PEARS) products.

The experience also demonstrates the importance of the Chain of Survival, or the linking of key emergency cardiovascular care systems.

Thank you, Jeremy, for doing lifesaving work both at AHA and in your role in the hospital!

I’m happy to write today about our collaboration with the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), announced at the AAPI Convention in San Antonio at the end of June. Cardiovascular disease (CVD), cardiac arrest and stroke know no borders, and we will work closely with the AAPI to help save lives in India and the United States.

In India, 56 out of 1,000 children do not reach age five.

Consider these alarming statistics: In our world today, more than 6.6 million children don’t reach their fifth birthday. That’s nearly 18,000 children every day. Sixty percent are dying from treatable conditions like acute respiratory infections, diarrhea and sepsis.

In India, this means 56 out of 1,000 children do not reach age five.

AHA and AAPI believe this is unacceptable and share a commitment to support United Nations Millennium Development Goal 4 designed to reduce mortality among children under age five by 2/3 by 2015.

We believe early detection and good training can improve cardiovascular health and save more children’s lives. Together, we plan to:

• Introduce Saving Children’s Lives training program in India:

o   This healthcare training program is specifically designed to improve care for children in limited-resource areas in the first stages of illness – starting with the community health worker all the way to the advanced care practitioner.

o   The AHA’s Pediatric Assessment, Recognition and Stabilization (PEARS®) course helps providers recognize and stabilize illnesses that can quickly become deadly.

• Expand the curriculum of resuscitation science in all Indian medical colleges using AHA teaching material like our Basic Life Support, Advanced Life Support and Pediatric Advanced Life Support programs.
• Develop training faculty in India to assist with the demand for instructor-led resuscitation training.
• Launch community programs in India and the US to raise awareness of heart attacks and strokes.

For 30 years, the AHA has been a world leader in pediatric emergency care science and training by funding research, writing guidelines and training nearly 15 million people in lifesaving skills each year.

The AAPI Conference was a tremendous success

Together with the AAPI, we are uniquely positioned to make an impact. We will create an exchange of ideas and shared actions between our organizations that can improve access to quality healthcare regardless of where one lives.