Congress Can Save Lives 📧
Last year, thanks to the work of tens of thousands of advocates just like you, the HEARTS Act became the law of the land. This bipartisan bill authorized the creation of a new grant program to equip schools across the country to respond to a cardiac emergency by helping them purchase and maintain an AED (automated external defibrillator), train school staff and volunteers on CPR and make sure they have a plan for what to do in a cardiac emergency. Authorizing the creation of this lifesaving program was a critical first step. Now Congress needs to fund it!
More than 350,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest each year outside of a hospital, and more than 23,000 of them are children. Unfortunately, only 10% of people survive a cardiac arrest, most likely due to lack of timely intervention. A person’s chance of survival can double or even triple if someone nearby calls 911, starts CPR and uses an AED right away. In schools with an AED present, the chances of a child surviving a cardiac arrest increase to 70 percent—seven times the overall survival rate for children!