LatinaLista — The first week of June is more than just the start of looking forward to summer vacations with the family or long days by the pool or at the beach. It’s also the time that the American Heart Association wants everybody to remember that saving a life is literally in each of our hands.
June 1-7 is National CPR and AED Awareness Week. This year the American Heart Association has set a goal of educating 1 million Americans about both CPR and AED, or automated external defibrillator. To help them reach this goal, the AHA is reaching out to a new audience — teens.
It only takes two steps to remember how to perform Hands-Only CPR.
Going beyond just the torso dummy used in CPR classes in schools, the AHA created a site just for teens called Be the Beat where they can play video games to learn how to perform CPR, download graphics and avatars and even tap into a playlist of 100-beat-per-minute songs to set the right pace for chest compressions.
In addition to reaching out to teens, the AHA is also trying to reach more adults. In a special event to be held on NYC’s Broadway on Thursday, June 3 at 1:30 p.m. at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, Latino cast members from Broadway’s “In the Heights” and “West Side Story” will participate in The Heartbeat of Broadway, a special event to learn the new Hands-Onlyâ„¢ CPR.
Hands-Onlyâ„¢ CPR is a potentially life-saving option for people not trained in conventional CPR or unsure of their ability to perform the necessary steps, including mouth-to-mouth breathing.
Hands-Onlyâ„¢ involves two easy steps: Call 911 and push hard and fast on the chest’s center. Compressions are given at 100 beats per minute and participants at The Heartbeat of Broadway training will practice to Broadway songs at that tempo.
To help the AHA reach their one million goal, people only need to take a few moments and visit the website to learn more about both CPR and AED.
“The sad truth is most people don’t survive a cardiac arrest. Getting people to act quickly in a cardiac arrest emergency is critical to a victim’s survival because time is not on their side. Four to six minutes is the window of opportunity for someone to act before it is too late, but fewer than one-third of cardiac arrest victims get CPR from someone nearby.” — American Heart Association
