Year: 2015

At the American Heart Association, we believe preparation is the essential key to saving lives and that’s why we are constantly trying to find ways to make consumers feel prepared and comfortable in emergency situations. We often hear that bystanders are unsure what to do when there is an emergency situation and they don’t know how to administer the lifesaving skills of CPR. This holiday season, please consider the gift of CPR training for your family and friends so they won’t fall into the category of “unprepared”.

Here’s a real-world scenario where CPR training saved a family from spending the holidays without their father. Sonya Vezmar, an American Heart Association Community CPR Manager in Cleveland, was enjoying a friend’s birthday on Halloween when she was startled by the sound of someone screaming “Call 9-1-1! Call 9-1-1!” She initially thought the person screaming was playing a joke until she saw others, including the manager and staff on hand, in a panic and yelling for help.

When Sonya looked over, she saw a mid-50s gentleman sitting in a chair that looked very pale and non-responsive. That’s when her CPR skills kicked in and asked him if he was okay while tapping his shoulders. There was no response.

Sonya immediately removed his shirt and started doing chest compressions. After only about five compressions, the man started blinking his eyes and his color came back to his face. She then put a jacket under his head and waited with him until EMS arrived to look him over and asses his situation. The man’s son was crying while he hugged Sonya, as he recognized the gravity of the moment.

“CPR WORKS!!!” Sonya said. “I know I teach it every day and hear stories every day about how it works but until I found myself in the position to actually have to perform it, I think I may have doubted myself to do it right. It amazes me to think that I trusted in what I’d been taught, followed the steps and the outcome was that I ‘saved’ a life. This experience has deeply touched me and just reinforces the importance of what we all do day in and day out.”

“CPR is an important lifesaving skill that can teach you how to save a life,” she added. “It can happen to anyone and it can happen at any time; you never know when you will have to use it. It is something that everyone should know how to do!”

We thank Sonya for being such a tremendous AHA ambassador for CPR training and her amazing save. Without her quick action, one family could possibly be without their father this holiday season. As you scramble for last minute holiday gifts, or if you’re thinking of resolutions for the new year, why not consider the gift of lifesaving CPR training for your family and friends? Please visit www.shopcpranytime.org for a variety of training materials that you can perform from the comfort of your own home. I wish you and yours a very happy holiday season and Happy New Year!

In a recent article titled, “CPR Survival Rates Can Differ Greatly by City,” The New York Times wrote about the discrepancies in survival rates across the country and even in the hospital setting. We thank The New York Times for highlighting the importance of creating a culture of action to improve survival from cardiac arrest. As a leader in resuscitation science and innovation, we are committed to saving more lives through our CPR, first aid and advanced cardiovascular care training materials, as well as our programs and awareness campaigns.

The article focuses on the need for improvements both in communities and in hospitals. This is something we agree with, and it’s why we’re leading the way with our education, training and quality improvement initiatives, all backed by the latest resuscitation science.

While we’re glad this article shines a national spotlight on the importance of lifesaving CPR, we also worry it sends some mixed messages and missed an opportunity to discuss what is currently being done to improve survival rates and the overall quality of CPR.

Here’s a list of the article’s key points, as well as some ways we’re already working towards a solution.

Improving survival rates:

The piece references the survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is about 10 percent, but depending on where you live, your chance of survival could be very different. For example, Seattle King County has worked for over seven years to strengthen their systems of care to increase bystander CPR rates and EMS systems, and as a result, they increased their survival rate to 19.9 percent. The article notes that cities like Detroit have a survival rate of about 3 percent.

The article also touches on mistakes healthcare providers make by checking for breaths too long or not performing CPR long enough.

What you should also know: it takes a village

• The latest AHA Guidelines Update calls for strengthened systems of care to increase survival. It must be a coordinated effort between communities, EMS systems and health systems.
• If every system of care focused on high-quality CPR and implemented AHA Guidelines, we would greatly improve survival rates system-wide. With King County as an example, we know it takes lots of hard work and dedication to ensure high quality implementation.
• For years we’ve focused on educating the public about cardiac arrest and CPR through public service announcements and CPR awareness campaigns for the general public. We’re building the next Generation of Lifesavers™ with our CPR in Schools effort and helping more people learn the easy steps to save a life with our Hands-Only CPR campaign.
• Timely CPR doubles or even triples the chance of survival from OHCA.  We also know that high-quality CPR by healthcare professionals improves outcomes.  We know that we can save more lives, which is why we created a goal in 2010 to double cardiac arrest survival by 2020. Saving lives is why we believe in training people in CPR (we currently train about 17 million people worldwide each year).

What about in-hospital care?

While there have been numerous advancements in care, in-hospital survival stands at about 20 percent. The article says the major cause of variations in outcomes is lack of systematic benchmarking of cardiac arrest data.

There are several references in the article that suggest poor CPR performance within hospitals, and how poor performance can harm the patient even if they received immediate bystander CPR before arriving to the facility.

What you should also know: more data and advanced technology are part of the solution

• Centralized and standardized data collection is key, and we’re working hard with other organizations to make that a reality. Check out our Special Report for more information about the commitments we’re making in this area.
• Education guidelines highlight that resuscitation skills can decline within a few months – far before the two-year current evaluation standard.
• The latest guidelines reinforce that more-frequent, High-Quality CPR training can help hospitals deliver the highest quality of emergency cardiovascular care to patients.
• We launched the Resuscitation Quality Improvement (RQI) program targeting EMS and hospital professionals to ensure their CPR competency is maintained with the intent of improving resuscitation quality and patient outcomes.
• Our quality improvement programs such as Get With the Guidelines-Resuscitation and Mission Lifeline: Resuscitation provide tools, data and feedback to healthcare professionals to ensure they could monitor and close any gaps in resuscitation quality performance.

I hope this information gives you a good look at the state of CPR training and quality. Want to learn more about how to save a life? Head over to cpr.heart.org and be sure to subscribe to my blog in the footer below to always be the first to know about our latest advancements in emergency cardiovascular care.

Note from John: This year’s Resuscitation Science Symposium (ReSS), being held in Orlando from November 7th-9th, is the 13th annual meeting of what has grown to be the world’s premiere gathering of researchers, scientists and clinicians presenting and debating the latest discoveries in cardiac and trauma resuscitation. I’ve asked my colleague Brian Eigel, VP of ECC Science and Product Development, to write a guest blog post about what we should expect at this year’s conference.

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Only three weeks after the release of our Guidelines Update for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and Emergency Cardiovascular Care (ECC), it’s an exciting time for resuscitation science! I’ve personally been with the American Heart Association through three guidelines cycles, and the anticipation by healthcare professionals, first responders, instructors, etc. for our guidelines release has grown every time. Whether you’re attending ReSS or not, here’s my own “baker’s dozen” list that highlights what I think will be some of the most popular sessions throughout the event.

1) Institute of Medicine (IOM) Report on Cardiac Arrest: On June 30th, the IOM published a report on strategies to improve cardiac arrest survival in the US (which was accompanied by an AHA Special Report highlighting our support of the IOM’s eight key recommendations).  IOM president Dr. Victor Dzau and four of the IOM report authors will present and discuss the recommendations with ReSS audience members.

2) Therapeutic Hypothermia: Following recent research results and a guideline update, panelists will review and debate the appropriate target temperature for hypothermia in cardiac and traumatic resuscitation treatment.

3) Digital Media: This session will cover innovative possibilities to harness mobile technology, social media and data to increase bystander CPR, increase the use of public AEDs, access experts via telemedicine anytime/anywhere and mine big data for clues to improve cardiac arrest survival.

4) Oral Abstracts: Attendees will be able to hear and debate over 35 oral research presentations covering some of the latest advances in resuscitation research.

5) Year in Review: Panelists will present and discuss key research publications from the past year in both cardiac arrest and trauma resuscitation.

6) Dispatcher-Assisted CPR: As the 2015 recipient of the Dickinson W. Richards Memorial Lecture, Dr. Thomas Rea’s presentation on “CPR Science: Discovery and Implementation” will serve as the keynote for a session that will also include presentations from groups in Taiwan and Arizona showing the impact of dispatcher-assisted CPR on increasing rates of bystander CPR and cardiac arrest survival.

7) Personalized Resuscitation: It is increasingly clear that as with so many things in life, “one size does not fit all” and panelists will highlight the latest discoveries that support the need to personalize cardiac resuscitation care, post-cardiac arrest care and hemorrhage resuscitation.

8) ECC Guidelines Highlights: Four authors of the recent 2015 AHA Guidelines Update for CPR & ECC will present and discuss the key highlights of the Basic Life Support (BLS), Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) and Pediatric BLS/ACLS.

9-12) Four Late Breaking Clinical Trials: Hot off the presses, these four “late breakers” are sure to be of interest to clinicians and researchers around the world:

* Early epinephrine for shockable in-hospital cardiac arrest

* Early oral bisoprolol for pulseless ventricular arrhythmias in patients with acute NSTEMI

* Temporal trends in OHCA in Southern Ontario

* ROC randomized trial of continuous versus interrupted chest compressions in OHCA

13) Networking: ReSS offers opportunities for both formal and informal networking to allow both old friends and new collaborators to meet and exchange ideas for advancing the care of traumatic and cardiac resuscitation patients.  The Young Investigator event allows early career members opportunities to network with experienced investigators to learn more about mentorship, research and navigating career opportunities in cardiovascular research.  The Women in Resuscitation Networking Event will discuss mentorship in academia with Kathleen Dracup, RN, FNP, PhD, FAAN; during the Japanese Circulation Society/ReSS joint session attendees will learn about and discuss experiences with implementing and maintaining a national cardiac arrest registry.

I hope to see you in Orlando!

-Brian Eigel, Ph.D.

At the American Heart Association, we are committed to building lives free of cardiovascular diseases and stroke not just in the United States, but worldwide. Today, at the 26th Great Wall International Congress of Cardiology in Beijing, I am happy to announce the American Heart Association has signed a licensing agreement with the China Heart Federation (CHF) to educate women in China about the their risk for cardiovascular disease, including heart disease and stroke, through our Go Red For Women movement, which CHF will implement locally.

“This is an exciting opportunity to reach more women in China with this lifesaving message,” said Dayi Hu, M.D., president of China Heart Federation. “We’re making an impact already in heart health here, and we look forward to creating our own Go Red For Women movement to inspire and educate even more women that cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death, and give them the tools to take action to change that,” Hu said.

While 80 percent of heart disease in women is preventable, cardiovascular diseases (heart disease and stroke) kill more women globally than all cancers, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, according to the World Heart Federation (WHF).

Only one in 10 Chinese women know that heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death among women in China, according to a 2010 survey from the WHF. The reality is that cardiovascular diseases cause one-third of all deaths in China, and that number is expected to double by 2020 due to an aging population, smoking and changes in diet and lifestyle.

“China consists of an immense population of patients with a high morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease,” said Mariell Jessup, M.D., a past president of AHA and medical director of the Penn Heart and Vascular Center in Philadelphia. “Working with China Heart Federation to improve the cardiovascular health of women is an important part of an overall approach.”

Since its creation in 2004, Go Red For Women has increased awareness that cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 killer of women worldwide, educated women about the signs and symptoms of a heart attack, and illustrated how women can lead a more heart-healthy lifestyle. Additionally, Go Red For Women encourages women to share what they’ve learned about heart health with their loved ones.

The new collaboration is among the more than 50 global agreements made by the AHA in collaboration with the WHF. I am extremely proud that our past Global Strategies efforts have helped create additional opportunities for other AHA initiatives, such as Go Red, to help save more lives worldwide. We know CHF’s Go Red For Women movement will help empower women in China to lower their risks for cardiovascular disease.

With the release of our 2015 Guidelines Update for CPR and ECC last week, we stressed that people should continue to jump in quickly to give CPR to speed up the rescue of cardiac arrest victims. The guidelines, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, highlight how quick action, proper training, use of technology and coordinated efforts can increase survival from cardiac arrest.

We have a staff member within our Emergency Cardiovascular Care (ECC) department who is a testament to the importance of immediate bystander action.  Jennifer Zanganeh, who works as an ECC Account Manager in our Los Angeles office, jumped in to help save a young boy recently at a roller skating rink. Within seconds, the boy started responding. “When I felt his heartbeat … it was indescribable,” Zanganeh said of the mid-September rescue.

The boy was lucky that a pair of lifesavers jumped in to perform CPR. It’s often not the case in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, but it makes a huge difference, doubling or tripling the odds of survival. That’s a promising stat considering there are more than 326,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur in the U.S.

It’s always amazing when a life is saved using CPR. And we are all especially proud when that life is saved by one of our own. As Jennifer’s story illustrates, it’s crucial that all of us stay up to date on our CPR training. If you haven’t taken a refresher class in a while, please do so, and please encourage your colleagues, friends and families to do the same because you’ll never know when you may need to jump in and save a life.

Please read the full story here on our blog.heart.org site.

Every five years, we undergo a rigorous international evaluation process that involves hundreds of resuscitation scientists and experts who evaluate thousands of peer-reviewed publications to update our Guidelines Update for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and Emergency Cardiovascular Care (ECC). The guidelines, published today in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association and are based off the latest resuscitation research, have been published since 1966 to provide science-based recommendations for treating cardiovascular emergencies – particularly cardiac arrest in adults, children, infants and newborns.

This 2015 update confirms known CPR recommendations from 2010, with several quality enhancements to help save even more lives, including a range for the rate and depth of chest compressions during CPR. Overall, the new guidelines highlight the importance of a strengthened system of care by healthcare professionals, immediate bystander response, and employing mobile technology to speed up the rescue of cardiac arrest victims.

More than 326,000 people experience cardiac arrest outside of a hospital each year and about 90 percent of them die, often because bystanders don’t know how to start CPR or are afraid they’ll do something wrong. The 2015 guidelines say high-quality CPR training for both bystanders and healthcare providers will help them feel more confident to act and provide better CPR to cardiac arrest victims. This guidelines update, which is intended to evolve CPR training, also recommends that all bystanders should act quickly and use mobile phones to alert dispatchers, with the ultimate goal of having immediate CPR given to all victims of cardiac arrest.

“Everyone has a role to play in the Chain of Survival – from bystanders to dispatchers, emergency responders to healthcare providers,” said Dr. Mark A. Creager, president of the American Heart Association and professor of medicine at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and director of the Heart and Vascular Center at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH. “When everyone knows their role, knows CPR and works together, we can dramatically improve cardiac arrest victims’ chances of survival.”

Please visit 2015ECCguidelines.heart.org for a full compendium of all the association’s scientific findings. Also today, the American Heart Association and the American Red Cross jointly released the 2015 Guidelines Update for First Aid. We have co-sponsored the development and publication of these guidelines since 2005.

Note from John: For World Heart 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. 

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September 29 is designated as “World Heart Day”.  World Heart Day, an initiative of the World Heart Federation, is an opportunity for people across the globe to take part in the world’s biggest intervention against cardiovascular disease (CVD; including heart disease and stroke).  CVD is the number 1 cause of death globally.  More people die annually from CVD than from any other cause.  An estimated 17.5 million people died from CVD in 2012, which is 31% of all global deaths.

This year, the focus of World Heart Day is on creating heart healthy environments.  So what exactly does a heart healthy environment refer to?  It refers to environmental factors, such as clean air, that favorably influence heart health.  You may think there isn’t much you can do to change the environment, but in reality there are things to make it healthier.

For example, the American Heart Association issued a scientific statement about 10 years ago concluding that exposure to air pollution contributes to cardiovascular illness and mortality. It is especially dangerous to the elderly or to people with pre-existing medical conditions. Environmental air pollution can come from traffic, factories, power generation, or wildfires. You may not feel as it you can influence these factors, but you can, for example, try to live some distance from polluting factories or heavily traveled highways.  However, you can have direct influence on one of the most common indoor sources of air pollution — smoking.  Smoking is a danger to both the smoker and to those nearby (“second-hand smoke”).  In fact, according to the World Health Organization, tobacco kills around 6 million people each year. More than 5 million of these deaths are the result of direct tobacco use, while more than 600,000 deaths are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.  So if there is a smoker in your house, urge them to quit smoking, or at least to give up smoking while inside the house.  In some regions of the world, or even in parts of the US, there are not laws banning smoking in the workplace.  If you work in such an environment, talk to your employer about providing smoke free working areas or join in with colleagues to approach local governments.

In addition to improving environmental conditions, there are many personal actions you can take to improve your risk of CVD. The AHA My Life Check® assessment was designed with the goal of improved health by educating the public on how best to live. The measures of “Life’s Simple Seven” have one unique thing in common: any person can make these changes, the steps are not expensive to take and even modest improvements to your health will make a big difference. They include:

• Manage blood pressure
• Control cholesterol
• Reduce blood sugar
• Get active
• Eat better
• Lose weight
• Stop smoking

This simple, seven step list has been developed to deliver on the hope we all have–to live a long, productive healthy life. Join others around the world who are committing to live a more heart-healthy lifestyle. Check your heart score and risk for cardiovascular disease at http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/My-Life-Check—Lifes-Simple-7_UCM_471453_Article.jsp

As the World Heart Federation says, we should ensure that everyone has the chance to make healthy heart choices wherever they live, work and play. World Heart Day encourages us all to reduce our cardiovascular risk, and promotes a heart-healthy planet for those around us.

Happy World Heart Day!!

-Kathryn Taubert, PhD, FAHA

More than ever, it is “a Time to Act.” More than 500,000 cardiac arrests occur annually in- and out-of-hospital in the United States and only about 10 percent of out-of-hospital victims survive.

Today, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a report entitled “Strategies to Improve Cardiac Arrest Survival: A Time to Act (2015),” calling for more national collaboration to create a culture of action. The American Heart Association supports the IOM’s report and recognizes the opportunity for AHA to continue our work to meaningfully improve outcomes for cardiac arrest.

We are already supporting the IOM’s recommendations to improve survival from cardiac arrest through a broad range of strategies, from CPR programs and advocacy initiatives to educate the public to quality improvement efforts to help hospitals improve delivery of care and survival from cardiac events.

The IOM report outlines eight recommendations to improve survival from sudden cardiac arrest.

1. Establish a national cardiac arrest registry.
2. Foster a culture of action through public awareness and training.
3. Enhance the capabilities and performance of EMS systems.
4. Set national accreditation standards related to cardiac arrest for hospitals and health care systems.
5. Adopt continuous quality improvement programs.
6. Accelerate research on pathophysiology, new therapies, and translation of science for cardiac arrest.
7. Accelerate research on the evaluation and adoption of cardiac arrest therapies.
8. Create a national cardiac arrest collaborative.

Five years ago we set some aggressive strategic goals to guide us in these efforts, based off of data from 2010:

• By 2020, 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 2020.

At the halfway point, 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. This new IOM report will help accelerate the AHA’s goal of doubling cardiac arrest survival, which saves an additional 50,000 cardiac arrest victims each year. We applaud the IOM for their work and know it will help us raise awareness of the issue of cardiac arrest and help save more lives.

In response to the IOM’s report, the American Heart Association today issued a special report outlining its bolstered commitment to improving survival from cardiac arrest. It includes:

• Providing up to $5 million over 5 years to incentivize resuscitation data collection and sharing;
• Pursuing philanthropic support for local and regional implementation opportunities to increase cardiac arrest survival by improving out-of-hospital and in-hospital systems of care;
• Generating support to launch a resuscitation research network; and
• Co-sponsoring a national cardiac arrest summit to help create a national cardiac arrest collaborative to identify common goals to improve survival.

For more than 40 years, we have produced Guidelines for CPR and Emergency Cardiovascular Care (ECC) and through promoting the principles of the chain of survival – early recognition and activation of EMS, early CPR, early defibrillation and early access to emergency medical care – have contributed to saving hundreds of thousands of lives around the world over the past fifty years. We commend this report and will continue training millions of lifesavers every year to educate them on the importance of cardiac arrest.

Click here for more information on the IOM report and the American Heart Association’s responsive Special Report.

Today I am proud to celebrate the past 10 years of our formal strategic relationship with Laerdal Medical, formed from the American Heart Association’s (AHA) need to enter the digital and self-directed learning space. Our collaboration has created innovative and mission advancing solutions that neither organization could have accomplished alone.

As AHA’s first “strategic relationship” with a for-profit company, together we have shown the tremendous innovative potential of these types of alliances. Our shared vision to solve unmet needs in emergency cardiovascular care training through innovation has, no doubt, saved countless lives.

The foundation of the relationship and focus on self-directed learning has remained consistent; however, we have made great strides at the strategic and operational levels, having evolved and matured dramatically to exceed our mission goals.

Several of our most significant innovations include HeartCode®, CPR Anytime®, RQI™ and the CPR in Schools Training Kit, and we have expanded to combine self-directed learning and international cooperation in emerging markets like China and India with programs like Saving Children’s Lives.

Our joint research and development activities around new methods and solutions are helping to ensure healthcare providers develop and maintain lifesaving skill competencies around the world.

The purpose of the AHA and Laerdal Alliance remains unwavering – focus on self-directed learning, international cooperation and research, and development of innovative solutions to drive positive health outcomes and our 2020 impact goals.

Here are a few pictures from today’s event:

 

While death rates in the United States are declining, 38 million people die from noncommunicable diseases (NCD) globally, with cardiovascular disease (including heart disease and stroke) remaining the leading cause of death in the world. As part of our commitment to building healthier lives, free of cardiovascular diseases and stroke around the world, the American Heart Association (AHA) today signed a formal memorandum of understanding with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) to advance CPR training and cardiovascular science sharing in the world’s most populous country. This effort marks a significant step forward in advancing the World Health Assembly’s goal of a 25 percent reduction in premature deaths from noncommunicable diseases by 2025.

The agreement intends to accelerate cooperation in three areas important to reducing the global burden of NCD.

1. CPR training and awareness initiatives to train people how to use CPR to save the life of someone experiencing cardiac arrest. With cardiac arrest, seconds count; immediate CPR from a bystander can double or triple a victim’s chance of survival.
2. Physician exchange to expand opportunities to convene researchers, healthcare providers, epidemiologists and public health specialists from the United States and the People’s Republic of China. The joint purpose is to share ideas, develop fellowship and advance programs that will improve systems of care, patient outcomes and overall health and wellness in both countries.
3. Cardiovascular science engagement opportunities will expand AHA’s global science-sharing efforts through AHA annual meetings, joint science sessions at other countries’ cardiology societies, and local science meetings to regularly share the best in science with leading scientists, researchers, and practitioners from the PRC and the United States.

This cooperative agreement offers another example of how we are working to significantly impact global health and further our efforts to create a world of lifesavers.  We are the only organization that provides multi-level first aid, CPR and advanced lifesaving training in more than 100 countries. Our resuscitation leadership combined with our experience in preventing and treating cardiovascular disease makes us uniquely positioned to meet this health challenge working with MOST.

Consider this:

• NCDs are China’s Number One Health Threat
• NCDs like diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, and cancer, kill more people globally and in China than infectious diseases.
• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), NCDs account for 70 percent of all deaths globally; however, NCDs are estimated to account for 87 percent of total deaths in China.
• Cardiovascular diseases account for most NCD deaths and cardiovascular diseases specifically account for 45 percent of total deaths in China.
• The population is aging in China, the world’s most populous country, and NCDs are becoming more common.
• Growing urbanization is one of the socioeconomic risks for NCDs. China’s urban population of more than 680 million people outnumbered its rural population for the first time in January, 2012.
• According to the WHO in 2011, 47 percent of adult males smoked tobacco in China.

“The knowledge to treat and prevent cardiovascular disease and stroke in one country can benefit people in many other countries. By training more people in CPR, more lives can be saved. More than 16 million people are trained in AHA First Aid, CPR or Advanced Life Support programs each year. Even if just a small percentage of the Chinese population learns CPR, that would result in millions more lifesavers in the world, who are prepared and ready to act in a cardiac arrest emergency,” said Gordon F. Tomaselli, MD, past president of the American Heart Association and director of the Division of Cardiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. Tomaselli is one of the AHA volunteer representative for the U.S.-China High-Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange (CPE).

The memorandum of understanding agreement was signed today at a celebratory event at the Mayflower Renaissance in Washington, D.C. after the U.S.-China High-Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange (CPE). With the signing of the MOU, the AHA and MOST will now work together to create specific implementation plans for each of the three areas of the cooperative agreement.

I hope you are as excited as I am about this opportunity to create more lifesavers around the world. Check out some photos from today’s event below.