Vian Public Schools receives Heart Safe designations

Vian Public Schools, in collaboration with Arkansas Children’s Heart Institute, announced on April 3, they have received Heart Safe designations through Project ADAM, a program that ensures schools have automated defibrillator (AED) equipment, response training and advanced emergency preparedness procedures in the event of a Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) on campus.

Project ADAM partners with schools and organizations nationwide to encourage preparedness for an emergency situation and save lives. Project ADAM (Automated Defibrillators in Adam’s Memory) was named for Adam Lemel, a 17-year-old Wisconsin teenager who suffered a fatal sudden cardiac arrest in 1999 while playing basketball at school. Access to an AED and immediate care could have saved Adam’s life.

Project ADAM’s Heart Safe School program ensures schools and organizations have well-maintained AEDs available on site, CPR- and AEDtrained staff and a practiced emergency plan to respond to a collapse, giving students, staff and community visitors the best possible chance to survive an unexpected cardiac event. For the school this entailed recruiting CPR/AED trained staff members to be on the emergency response team, and completing drills in preparation for a designation drill with the Arkansas Children’s Heart Institute outreach coordinator, Charles Wooley.

For the drills, a CPR manikin is placed at an undisclosed area of a school and a random person is told there is a medical emergency. The school is expected to activate the response team, locate the manikin and start CPR. For the designation drill on April 3, 911 was called and Pafford EMS responded to complete the drill as if it were a true emergency.

Vian is the first district in Oklahoma to achieve Heart Safe designations for their schools. Mr. Wooley, oversees the program in all Arkansas school districts. He stated that currently there are 150 Heart Safe designated schools in Arkansas and three in Oklahoma.

Nurse Amber Spyres, the school nurse for the district, stated that the Heart Safe School designations could not have been achieved without the willing participation of so many staff members and the support of the school administration. She further stated that without Project ADAM the level of preparedness achieved would not even be possible.

According to the American Heart Association, more than 350,000 out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests occur in the United States each year, and approximately 10 percent survive. Since 1999, more than 4,000 schools across the country have achieved a Heart Safe designation.

Learn more about the Project ADAM program at.archildrens.org/programsand- services/cardiology/Services/ project-adam and the national Project ADAM program at ProjectADAM.com.