Year: 2016

In my role at the American Heart Association, I travel on a regular basis and spend lots of time in airports waiting to catch flights. It’s amazing the amount of foot traffic that airports see on a daily basis. Approximately 176,000 passengers pass through my hometown airport, Dallas-Ft. Worth, every day.

Thinking about the number of people who sit for long periods of time at airports played a role in addressing the AHA’s ambitious goals for training people in the lifesaving skill of CPR.

Here’s the hard truth: 90 percent of people who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests die before medical responders arrive on the scene. This is not only true internationally, but particularly in the United States. When the AHA set its 2020 goal to double survival from cardiac arrest, the former EMT in me became fixated on finding a solution to improve survival within those first few minutes of cardiac arrest.

The answer is simple–everyone needs to know CPR and anyone can learn this lifesaving skill. This tactical solution proved more challenging until we took inspiration from a social experiment conducted in Sweden. Social scientists there took a look at a fun way to encourage people to use the stairs instead of an escalator. After hearing about this experiment, I started thinking whether we could take that same concept and create something fun and engaging in a high-traffic location that would demystify CPR.

Fast forward four years. We installed our first Hands-Only CPR kiosk at DFW Airport in 2013. Each kiosk offers a touch screen that shows a brief video introducing the two steps of Hands-Only CPR. Users can then take a practice session followed by a 30-second CPR test. The kiosk provides feedback about the depth and rate of compressions and proper hand placement.

To date, nearly 25,000 people have learned Hands-Only CPR from this kiosk.

We’re grateful that Anthem Foundation sees the lifesaving potential in these kiosks. Thanks to their generous support, we are proud to announce the installation of seven new kiosks across the country in high-traffic locations:

Five Airports

• Chicago O’Hare International
• Indianapolis International
• Las Vegas’ McCarran International
• Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International
• Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall

Two Office Buildings

• Global Center for Health Innovation in Cleveland, Ohio
• Anthem’s office in Washington D.C.

As you wait for your next flight, you could learn how to save a life in about five minutes by visiting one of these Hands-Only CPR kiosks. We know of at least one life saved as a result of someone learning CPR on the kiosk – a story that was recently profiled on the syndicated talk show The Doctors.

Matt Lickenbrock, a University of Dayton student who saved the life of a fellow student struck by lightning by performing Hands-Only CPR, used the kiosk as a boredom buster during a three-hour layover at DFW Airport. He sums the experience up neatly: “I never thought I’d be in the situation to use it. No one ever does. But I knew I was doing what I was trained to do.”

To learn more about these new kiosks, visit our newsroom story here.

To learn more about CPR, please visit heart.org/cpr.

Throughout the month of February, our organization works diligently to remind Americans to focus on their hearts and encourage them to get their families, friends and communities involved. We’re also getting the world involved through collaborative efforts with many countries, primarily within Europe, South America, Africa, and most recently, China.

How did February become American Heart Month?

Valentine’s Day and the heart go hand-in-hand. The first American Heart Month, which took place in February 1964, was proclaimed by President Lyndon B. Johnson via Proclamation 3566 on December 30, 1963. The Congress, by joint resolution on that date, has made this request of the president annually.

Back then, more than half the deaths in the U.S. were caused by cardiovascular disease. While fatalities have decreased since the first American Heart Month in 1964, the most recent numbers are still grim. Perhaps most telling is that cardiovascular diseases claim more lives than all forms of cancer combined.

How can you get involved in better heart health?

There are many things we can do in our daily lives to help spread the message, and it’s particularly important to me because many of the women in my family have various forms of heart disease.

Consider these tips – and while we still have about 10 days left of American Heart Month, I’d encourage you to keep up these habits year-round.

1. Learn CPR and/or refresh your CPR skills. Start by learning Hands-Only CPR, but then consider taking one of our courses for a deeper dive into the subject matter. Search for a course offering near you on our Find A Course page.

2. Get at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous activity each week – or a combination of both. Thirty minutes a day, five times a week is an easy goal to remember. You will also experience benefits even if you divide your time into two or three segments of 10 to 15 minutes per day.

3. When you think meals, think healthy! When cooking at home, think heart-healthy food options all month long: MORE vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds and whole grains and LESS sodium, saturated fat, and added sugar.  Simple Cooking with Heart recipes make it easy – and tasty.

4. Check out the My Life Check® page to learn your heart score. My Life Check is a simple, seven step list designed by the AHA to deliver on the hope we all have – to live a long, productive healthy life.

5. Learn the signs of a stroke: Face drooping, arm weakness, and speech difficulty. If you see these, it’s time to call 9-1-1. The pneumonic FAST will help you remember the signs and action step.

Improving heart and brain health is our mission so that you can experience more of life’s precious moments. And until there’s a world free of heart disease and stroke, we’ll be here, working to make a healthier, longer life possible for everyone.

This month, please join me in watching and sharing our Life is Why video (above) on your social media accounts. Together, we can build a culture of health where making the healthy choice is the easy choice.  Why?  Because Life is Why.

Last year I was approached by an Instructor who suggested that he, his colleagues and American Heart Association might benefit from a social sharing and networking site (he called it a mash-up of LinkedIn and Facebook). Instructors are the public face of the AHA, and together we should be able to share our stories and have meaningful conversation. A social site seemed like a natural next step in the process.

Today I am proud to announce the launch of that site — our Instructor Community — created exclusively for the AHA Training Network. We have been piloting it for several months now with about 150 instructors, and we are thrilled to invite all of our AHA Instructors and Training Center Coordinators to join.

Features of the Instructor Community include:

• Online discussion forums to share ideas, discuss training courses, ask questions about the updated guidelines and more
• The Instructor Community blog where you can share your experience and read those of others
• The opportunity to connect with other Instructors in your area and around the country
• Downloadable resources to help you as an Instructor
• Provide feedback, suggestions, etc. to AHA CPR & ECC

Starting today, when you log in to the Instructor Network, you will see this widget (below) on your Dashboard. It will lead you directly into the Community. With our integrated “single sign-on” feature, you will not be required to create a new user account / password in the Community. We want to make it as seamless as possible to toggle back and forth between the Network and Community, and we hope this function makes it easier for you to come and go to the Community as you please.

Finally, I want to reiterate that this Community was built exclusively for you, our passionate and dedicated Instructors. This forum is only as good as the engaging, timely, and ongoing discussion that continues to take place. Please let us know how we can better serve you with your ideas to keep the site fresh and useful by reaching out to us at ahaic@heart.org. I personally thank you for your participation and for helping our Instructor Community to grow and thrive!

Note from John: Back by popular demand, we are excited to announce another series of our Emergency Cardiovascular Care (ECC) Regional Conferences that are designed to deepen knowledge around resuscitation science. I’ve asked my colleague Michael Smith, MPH, EMT-B and our Director of ECC Network Relations to write a guest blog post about these highly engaging and informative conferences.

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In March 2015, the American Heart Association’s ECC Department launched a series of professional resuscitation educational conferences held in five locations through the calendar year: San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Columbus, Ohio.

In case you were unable to attend, allow me to provide a high-level overview of what you missed. These one-day conferences engaged the entire ECC Training Network (Instructors, Training Centers and Volunteers) and covered essential topics in the science of CPR, instructor development and improving resuscitation outcomes. Each conference was attended by more than 150 people and included AHA Instructors, Training Center Coordinators, Physicians, Nurses, Nurse Educators, EMS Professionals, Cardiologists, Respiratory Therapists, Professors, and others interested in resuscitation, with continuing education credit for physicians, nurses, and emergency medical services. Specific topics covered include High-Quality CPR, AHA Educational Methodology, Use of Simulation in AHA courses, Use of Debriefing in AHA courses, Best Practice of Skills Practice and Testing, and Top Topics in Resuscitation.

Presenters at the conferences included industry experts such as Dr. Peter Kudenchuk, Dr. Michael Sayre, Dr. Meg Wolff, Dr. Lance Becker, Dr. Ben Abella, Dr. Farhan Bhanji, Dr. Beth Mancini, and Dr. David Rodgers.

With testimony from many attendees, including “I felt very motivated and inspired after attending” and “Overall, I was very impressed with the Professionalism of this conference. It was very informative and the educational experience was quite enjoyable. Overall, excellent conference” we are building on the 2015 success with another series of conferences in Spring 2016, including new topics, speakers and presentations.

The 2016 conference dates and locations are:

• February 10, 2016 Birmingham, AL – Hyatt Regency Birmingham (Register Now)
• March 17, 2016 Chicago, IL – Hilton Chicago/Indian Lakes Resort (Register Now)
• April 21, 2016 Denver, CO – Westin Denver International Airport (Register Now)
• May 12, 2016 Providence, RI – Renaissance Providence Downtown Hotel (Register Now)
• June 2, 2016 Seattle, WA – Hilton Seattle Airport & Conference Center (Register Now)

Presentations for our conferences currently include:

• A Focus on the Institute of Medicine’s Recommendations for Improving Cardiac Arrest Survival and the AHA’s Commitment to Increasing Cardiac Arrest Survival
• AHA Curriculum Design around Learning/Teaching Styles
• Community CPR
• Pediatric Resuscitation
• Instructor Development
• Continuous Quality Improvement with a Discussion of Feedback Devices.

After each conference, a special presentation will be provided for in-hospital providers interested in a new and innovative program for improving the quality of CPR skills.

The conference fee, which includes breakfast and lunch, is priced at an early bird rate of $185 per attendee. Early bird pricing ends one month before each conference date, when pricing increases to $200 per attendee.

If you have any questions about our ECC Regional Conferences, please e-mail me directly at michael.smith@heart.org. Hope to see ya there!