People get connected to advocacy in many ways. For some American Heart Association advocates, their advocacy starts when they are very young before they even realize that’s what it is. That was the case for Youth Heart Ambassador, Olivia Pacheco. Having 4 open heart surgeries before 17, Olivia sees that surviving means sharing her story…Read More…

Pictured above: Peg O’Connell and her late husband Jim Long, together, were formidable foes to the Big Tobacco industry in North Carolina.  Peg O’Connell has spent more than three decades as an American Heart Association grassroots advocate in the Carolinas. An attorney by training, O’Connell began her advocacy work in South Carolina, helping transform a…Read More…

Great grandma, grassroots advocate, offers retirement challenge to seniors Bea Cardenas-Duncan, 78, is a double retiree who believes seniors are a “forgotten community” with untapped influence to improve health and wellness. Affectionately known as “Miss Bea,” her challenge for fellow seniors wanting to get involved can be summed up in one sentence: Leave a legacy. …Read More…

One California Mom’s Advocacy Work Hits Close to Home  Dr. Jessica Sims has been part of numerous legislative successes in 13 years as a volunteer grassroots advocate for the American Heart Association. But to the emergency room physician and self-proclaimed ‘boy mom,’ her greatest accomplishment yet was seeing the sale of flavored tobacco and nicotine products…Read More…

Oklahoma teen speaks out for CPR preparedness: ‘You’re the first responder until help arrives’ On an icy January morning in rural Oklahoma, Magnus Miller, team captain in the spring semester of his senior year, stepped off a bus ready to compete in a high school basketball tournament. A winter storm threatened to derail the game,…Read More…

Wednesday morning, November 29, 2017, began like most workdays, with a treadmill workout before heading to work as the principal of Red Mountain Elementary School. At 7:45 a.m., we gathered for our monthly faculty meeting. I used the opportunity to share a timely message, prompted by recent conversations with several staff members who had privately…Read More…

In 2025, Jessica Bowser, a middle school student from Northwest Arkansas, proved that powerful advocacy can begin at any age. Jessica served as a youth advocate in support of Cardiac Emergency Response Plans (CERPs) for public schools across Arkansas, helping amplify student voices and elevate the importance of cardiac emergency preparedness on school campuses. As…Read More…

My momma always said, “Fail to plan, plan to fail.” I took this to heart, literally. When my son, Patrick, was diagnosed at age four with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, I knew I had to have a plan. I knew I had to inform people in our smalltown about his condition. When he was in 1st grade,…Read More…

At 29 years old, my wife Kristin had returned home from dropping the kids off at school and said that she had chest pain and tingling fingers. I walked into the room and found Kristin slumped over and breathing strangely. I rolled her over and saw that she was turning blue. After a moment of…Read More…

In November of 2023, Nick Schellinger began experiencing numbness on the right side of his body while picking up his twin sons from daycare. “I knew what was happening and was scared,” Schellinger recalled. “I quickly decided to advocate for myself and insisted to the emergency room desk staff that I was having a stroke….Read More…