February is American Heart Month, a time to raise awareness of cardiovascular health.
The campaign, led by the Dallas-based American Heart Association, aims to spread awareness about heart disease, the number one killer of Americans.
Did you know that the organization also has a mission to spread that awareness beyond borders?
The AHA has an international team made up of local members who travel the world to teach life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, skills in underdeveloped countries.
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“It started almost 60 years ago when we started working on [developing] CPR and that new technology was something the American Heart Association was very involved in bringing to healthcare providers and to the general public in the form of first aid and CPR courses,” said John Meiners, Chief of Mission Aligned Businesses and Healthcare Solutions for the American Heart Association. “Over time, that became in great demand around the rest of the world.”
In 2011, the American Heart Association Board commissioned a team to begin establishing training centers in other parts of the world to deliver this new life-saving training.
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“When our board commissioned us, they said we could generate revenues outside the United States to support that international work rather than work inside the United States. So our donations here in U.S. are used here in local communities and to support science. The training that we do outside the United States supports that global expansion,” Meiners said. “So many countries have welcomed us.”
To date, they have created thousands of training centers across the globe, training 22 million people per year in more than 100 countries.
"Cardiovascular disease and cardiac arrest is a leading cause of death around the world. So it's one of the things that unfortunately unites us. And the need for emergency cardiovascular care is universal. It’s what's brought us to work outside the states,” said Meiners.
The AHA is also part of the Acute Care Action Network, a global alliance between several countries, organizations and the World Health Organization to expand emergency care systems to lower-income countries. The effort is especially felt in remote places that don't have access to hospitals, so the need for life-saving skills is vital.
“Here in the United States, we call 911, and very highly trained EMTs and paramedics and fire departments arrive to take care of you,” Meiners said. “In other parts of the world, you might have a hospital with nothing for 100 miles, so you have to make your own way to the hospital.”
This spring, the international team will travel to Japan – which has a very high aging population – to help establish a similar Heart Month and Go Red for Women campaign as the United States. The effort is a continued partnership between the AHA and the Japanese Circulation Society.
“Their population is aging quite rapidly and they have unique challenges where the work that we're doing in the American Heart Association is complementary to what they're doing,” Meiners said. “We have these types of relationships with more than 200 organizations around the world.”
