Wrapping up Heart Month – 15,000 Sudbury Students CPR Trained

SUDBURY, ON (Lively District Secondary School, 265 5th Avenue, Lively, ON P3Y 1M4 at 11:00 a.m.): Wrapping up Heart Month and looking forward, the Advanced Coronary Treatment (ACT) Foundation along with lead community partner Vale, is empowering more teachers as CPR and AED Instructors for their students.

More than 15,000 students from the Conseil scolaire catholique du Nouvel-Ontario, Conseil scolaire public du Grand Nord de l’Ontario, Rainbow District School Board and the Sudbury Catholic District School Board have been empowered to save lives to date by their teachers through the ACT High School CPR and Defibrillator Training Program.

With eight in 10 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occurring at home or in public places, empowering youth with CPR training as part of their high school education will help increase citizen CPR response rates over the long term. Moreover, research indicates that early CPR, combined with early defibrillation, can increase survival rates for cardiac arrest victims by up to 75%.

The ACT Foundation is the national charitable organization that is establishing CPR and defibrillator training programs in high schools throughout Canada. The program is built on ACT’s award-winning community-based model of partnerships and support. Thanks to the support of ACT’s lead community partner Vale, provincial partners Government of Ontario and Hydro One, and health partners AstraZeneca Canada, Sanofi Canada and Amgen Canada, the CPR and Defibrillator Training program was set up in all Sudbury area high schools in 2013.

“We are thrilled with the continued support from Vale,” says Sandra Clarke, the ACT Foundation’s Executive Director. “With it, we can strengthen the program in the Sudbury high schools, ensuring all students graduate with the skills to save a life.”

To date, the ACT Foundation has set up the ACT High School CPR Program in more than 1,790 high schools nation-wide, empowering more than 4.2 million youth to save lives.

About the ACT Foundation

The ACT Foundation is the national charitable organization establishing the free CPR and AED program in Canadian high schools. The program is built on ACT’s award-winning community-based model of partnerships and support, whereby ACT finds local partners who donate the mannequins and AED training units that schools need to set up the program. High school teachers then teach CPR and how to use a defibrillator to their students as a regular part of the curriculum, reaching all youth prior to graduation. ACT’s partners, committed to bringing the program to Ontario are the Government of Ontario and Hydro One and our national health partners AstraZeneca Canada, Sanofi Canada, and Amgen Canada. www.actfoundation.ca or on Twitter @actfoundation #ACT2Save

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For further information, please contact:

Jennifer Edwards
Operations Manager
ACT Foundation
jedwards@actfoundation.ca
Tel: 613-286-5260
Toll: 800-465-9111

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