Hamilton teachers take first steps towards empowering local students to save lives with CPR and heart health education

HAMILTON, ON, 28/01/08

With Heart Month fast approaching, Jan. 30th will see physical education teachers from Hamilton Wentworth District School Board trained to empower their students with lifesaving CPR and heart health education all year long through the award-winning ACT High School CPR Program. They will join teachers from Hamilton Wentworth Catholic District School Board who received this training in late 2007. The training will take place at Maple Lane Learning Centre, 20 Miller Drive, Room 10.

While the program will officially kick off in Hamilton schools in spring 2008, the training workshops are the first steps towards ensuring the city’s youth are equipped with the knowledge and skills to save a life. Through the workshops, teachers learn not only how to perform CPR themselves, but also how to effectively teach this lifesaving technique to their students.

The ACT High School CPR Program is built on a strong community-based model of partnerships and support, whereby the Advanced Coronary Treatment (ACT) Foundation helps communities find local partners who donate the mannequins, curriculum materials, and teacher training that schools need to set up the program. High school teachers then teach CPR to their students as a regular part of the curriculum, reaching all youth prior to graduation.

At the community level, FirstOntario Credit Union is playing a key role as the lead community partner helping to bring the ACT Program to Hamilton through a donation of nearly $44,000. The Hamilton Spectator is donating the printing of the program’s student manuals.

The ACT Foundation’s goal in Ontario is to set up the lifesaving CPR program in every high school. To help make this possible, ACT has secured a provincial-level commitment from the Government of Ontario to enable the Foundation to seek matching funds for program resources at the community level through a public / private funding partnership. Also supporting the program at the provincial level are Hydro One, Shoppers Drug Mart and The Ontario Trillium Foundation. National partners are AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada, Pfizer Canada, and sanofi-aventis.

To date, the ACT High School CPR Program has been set up in over 500 Ontario high schools and over 750,000 Ontario students have been empowered to save lives.

Research indicates citizen CPR response can improve survival rate for victims of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest by almost fourfold. With eight in 10 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occurring at home, empowering youth with CPR training as part of their high school education will help increase citizen CPR response rates over the long term.

About the ACT Foundation
The ACT Foundation is a national, award-winning charitable organization dedicated to promoting health and empowering Canadians to save lives. ACT is driving a national campaign to establish CPR as a mandatory program in every Canadian high school. ACT raises funds for CPR mannequins for schools and guides schools in program set up. To date over 900,000 youth have been trained in more than 1,200 high schools across Canada. For more information visit:www.actfoundation.ca