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!

At the American Heart Association, it’s critical that we acknowledge and meet the needs of healthcare providers. That’s why we launched our new Basic Life Support for Prehospital Providers Course – a course that uses real-life, team environments customized for the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) audience.

Each year in the United States, more than 400,000 children and adults experience a cardiac arrest outside the hospital, and only 10 percent survive. Oftentimes, the EMS professionals arriving at the scene are the first ones to provide quality patient care to these victims. These heroes are on the front lines of healthcare and need training tools and materials tailored to serve them in the unique environments where they encounter patients.

EMS professionals have asked the AHA for a course to help them provide better patient care, and with this new course (LINK), we believe we’re better meeting their needs. It is the first training program from AHA specifically designed according to the new National EMS Education Standards and training needs of prehospital providers.

“The American Heart Association’s new course includes high-performance team CPR training designed to help increase survival from cardiac arrest. It features a variety of interactive, real-world scenarios EMS professionals encounter in the field every day,” said Mark Terry, MPA, NREMT-P, Deputy Chief of Johnson County Med-Act. “Advanced training for EMS professionals is a primary key to starting the chain of survival and achieving good patient outcomes through the delivery of high-quality CPR and strong basic life skills.”

While tailored for prehospital providers, this course covers the same objectives as BLS for Healthcare Providers, and successful completion results in a BLS for Healthcare Providers course completion card. BLS for Prehospital Providers is for prehospital emergency care professionals, including emergency medical technicians (EMTs), police officers, fire fighters, paramedics and advanced EMTs (AEMTs).

Our frontline EMS heroes are a critical element in the chain of survival. It is imperative that they have the tools they need to effectively perform their job. We’re proud to release new training materials designed not only to meet their needs, but help them save more lives.

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.

Three years ago this June, the American Heart Association decided to take CPR to the streets. Literally… We outfitted a trailer, sourced a street team and began a cross-country campaign teaching Americans the two simple steps of Hands-Only^TM CPR:

1. Call 9-1-1
2. Push hard and fast in the center of the chest to the beat of the Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive”

We made learning CPR fun and exciting, incorporating music, dancing and community. After three years, 18 tour stops and countless disco moves, we’ve trained over 16,000 people and will wrap up the tour with our final six cities this fall. Please visit www.heart.org/handsonlycpr for more information on our Hands-Only CPR campaign and mobile tour.

A Hands-Only CPR Tour stop during CPR Awareness Week 2014

This CPR Awareness Week I’m reflecting on the impact our collaboration with the WellPoint Foundation has had over the past three years. This musical road trip would not be possible without their generous support. They saw the value in this mission and the benefit of using music to educate people about CPR. Moreover, they helped us bring Hands-Only CPR to communities all over the country, spreading awareness and teaching skills that will ultimately save lives.

Our community efforts extend to the Latino population as well. Did you know that, in the United States, Latinos are 30 percent less likely to have someone perform CPR when they suffer a cardiac arrest? As our very own Comilla Sasson points out in her blog for Huffington Post (link), it is now more important than ever for ALL communities to learn Hands-Only CPR. Please take a moment to view our new training video here.

Equipping Americans with lifesaving skills is not an easy job, but many hands make light work. We are grateful to WellPoint, our staff, Volunteers and Instructors who have made the tour a tremendous success. Happy CPR Awareness Week!

Heartsaver Hero Awards are a special honor we give people who’ve used their CPR training to save a life. I’m always inspired by our Heartsaver Heroes, and it made me extra proud to recently recognize our own Mayur Patel, account manager for MD/DC/VA, with this special honor for saving his grandmother. Nothing makes me happier than to learn of how our own AHA family is living the mission.

Mayur had finished a day of account visits and had just gotten home to his parents’ house in Clarksburg, MD, where he was visiting for the weekend. He was upstairs when he heard very uncharacteristic noises and loud voices occurring downstairs, and realized something was wrong.

He went downstairs and found his parents around his paternal grandmother, who was on the couch. She was not moving and had poor color. The other three people in the room thought she had just passed out and were trying to wake her up.

Mayur recognized quickly it was worse than the others thought, and took charge of the situation. He told them to call 911 and positioned her to perform CPR.

“It was surreal,” Mayur said. “I really didn’t have to think; the training came back to me.”

He performed CPR for about eight minutes (but it seemed much longer than that) until EMS professionals from the local fire department arrived. The professionals took over for him and performed the pitcrew approach, according to Mayur. Before arriving at the local hospital his grandmother was shocked three times, and had a pulse on arrival, despite re-arresting a couple of times.

“She was in a coma and sedated about two day days, then she slowly woke up and had a couple-day period of more alertness and memory improvement,” Mayur said.

Mayur enjoys some time with his grandmother at home

Thankfully, Mayur’s grandmother is now home with some needed supportive care, but is improving in strength and memory every day.

Mayur said his role at AHA and his CPR training made all the difference in helping save his grandmother’s life. While he’s happy she’s on the road to recovery and was glad he was at the right place at the right time, he hopes he never has to relive this experience again. We hope so too.

As we celebrate EMS Appreciation Week, I would like to recognize Mayur and the Montgomery County Fire Dept. for living the AHA mission and using your CPR training to save a life! We applaud your courage!

Happy EMS Appreciation Week!

G’Day from Australia! Each year, the American Heart Association trains more than 14.5 million people around the world in CPR, first aid and advanced cardiovascular care. In addition to the domestic conferences we attend, we work tirelessly to spread our AHA mission to our international audience as well. One of the highlights at the World Congress of Cardiology meeting in Melbourne this past weekend was the spotlight Hands-Only™ CPR live action training at the American Heart Association booth. We’re thrilled that approximately 600 scientific and healthcare thought leaders from around the world participated in this training experience and received a CPR Anytime® kit to take back to their hometown.

World Congress of Cardiology thought leaders learn Hands-Only™ CPR in Melbourne.

The AHA is a founding member of the World Heart Federation, the host of the biennial meeting. A significant focus of the meeting was around the recently established WHO goal of reducing non-communicable diseases, also known as chronic diseases, by 25% by 2025. Cardiovascular disease accounts for more than 60% of these NCD deaths, meaning the work we do has an extraordinary impact everywhere to help save lives. The international team is working hard to extend the mission globally via advocacy efforts, science and research collaboration and sharing programs like Hands-Only CPR in more countries. As we work hard to achieve our 2020 Impact Goal, remember that our collective effort each day matters – you’re helping to save lives!

Thanks for all you do on behalf of our lifesaving mission!

As we continue our efforts to produce future generations of lifesavers, I’d like to acknowledge some tremendous momentum we’ve gained during the most recent round of state legislative sessions since last fall. As a reminder, our CPR in Schools effort advocates for states to make CPR training – including the use of an automatic external defibrillator (AED) – a requirement for high school graduation.

At the time of this blog post, 15 states had already passed legislation with recent policy victories in Idaho, Mississippi and Maryland. We’ve also made great progress in Utah and Indiana. Utah appropriated significant money that will provide teachers with the resources they need to support CPR training in schools. We still have some work to do in Indiana, where the law currently allows for schools to opt out of the requirement. Despite these caveats, we are proud about the work we’ve done, and we’re hopeful both of these states, along with many others, will eventually sign bills into law that mirror legislation in the other 15 states.

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signing Breanna’s Bill, requiring CPR for graduation in Maryland.

Congratulations to AHA’s Advocacy team for their policy work and to our Community CPR team, who is working to put training solutions into action in states. Through these relentless efforts, the AHA is coming ever closer to creating and empowering the next generation of lifesavers!

**UPDATE: Monday, April 7th, 2014**

Our colleagues in India just wrapped up this wonderful video that highlighted the AAPI Summit. You can watch it here:

**ORIGINAL POST: Tuesday, January 28th, 2014**

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of representing the AHA at the highly successful and productive American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) Global Healthcare Summit in Ahmedabad, India. The AAPI’s overarching mission is to assist and enable Indian American Physicians to excel in patient care, teaching and research in professional and community affairs.

While there, I participated in key leadership meetings and shared the global role and vision of AHA during the AAPI-AHA Liaison Committee at the summit. I was quite humbled to be recognized by the Health Minister of India, Mr. Ghulam Nabi Azad, and the Cabinet Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs, Mr. Vayalar Ravi, for our organization’s strategic collaboration toward the common goal of reducing mortality from heart disease and stroke.

This trip exemplifies the progress of our global efforts. We currently have International Training Centers in more than 60 countries, and we look to expand our global footprint to improve worldwide survival rates and quality of life with our lifesaving CPR programs. We stand committed to the AAPI goals and plan to roll out programs focused on India in the near future. In fact, we are considering opening an office abroad in New Delhi, and Baroda Medical College in Gujarat, India is in the process of applying to become an AHA International Training Center.

Exciting things to come in India…stay tuned!

Fun Fact: Ahmedabad, India was home to Mohandas Gandhi – considered the father of the Indian independence movement. While in India, Gandhi’s obvious virtue, simplistic lifestyle, and minimal dress endeared him to the people. Many civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., used Gandhi’s concept of non-violent protest as a model for their own struggles.