1 Million New Lifesavers Will be in Our Communities Every Year, But Why Not in Massachusetts?

More than one million high school students a year will be trained in CPR because of state laws requiring the lifesaving skill as a graduation requirement and work done by the American Heart Association’s CPR in Schools efforts. As a result of 16 states, Oklahoma being the latest addition, across the country now requiring CPR for graduation, all one million students that graduate annually in these states will have been taught CPR. This means one million new qualified lifesavers will be added to our communities each and every year. The states of Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont and Washington now have laws or regulations on the books which require, prior to graduating from high school, all students to be trained in quality psychomotor skill based CPR. I wish Massachusetts was part of this list and I know with your help we can.

Over 420,000 people have cardiac arrest outside of a hospital every year, and only about 10 percent survive, most likely because they don’t receive timely CPR. Given right away, CPR doubles or triples survival rates. Teaching students CPR could save thousands of lives by filling our community with lifesavers—those trained to give sudden cardiac arrest victims the immediate help they need to survive until EMTs arrive. Sudden cardiac arrest can happen any place, at any time. If you suffer sudden cardiac arrest, your best chance at survival is receiving bystander CPR until EMTs arrive. But most do not. That’s a reality that has to change, starting today. Teaching students CPR before they graduate will now put millions of qualified lifesavers on our streets every year. Everyone benefits from having more lifesavers in our community. Learn about this important milestone at http://bit.ly/U0nYwC.

If you want to join with us and help your school district teach the lifesaving skill of CPR to their students. If you want to join, you can email me at [email protected] to get started!