Jewish Healthcare Foundation Grants Help Improve Community Safety with Defibrillators and CPR Training
Type: Press Release
Our community soon will be equipped with the latest technology and training needed to provide emergency care to heart attack victims, thanks to a JHF/Working Hearts initiative on Preventing Sudden Death.
The Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) provided grants to the United Jewish Federation’s 10 beneficiary agencies to purchase a total of 18 Automated External Defibrillators. As part of a collaborative effort, each agency contributed matching money equal to 20 percent of the cost of the defibrillators. JHF also is fully funding AED and CPR training sessions to staffs of the agencies and the Jewish community at large.
“Working with the agencies was the best way for us to make this life-saving technology and training broadly available within the Jewish community,” said JHF Chairman Stephen Halpern. “This collaboration ensures that the program will have the widest possible reach and that there is consistency in the kind of AED equipment in use throughout our community.”
Following the staff training that has begun at some agencies, JHF also will fund several training sessions in late summer or early fall that will be open to anyone in the community who wants learn more about AEDs and their use.
Sudden cardiac arrest is one of the leading causes of death in North America. More than 1.5 million heart attacks occur annually and some 350,000 victims die before reaching a hospital. The availability of AEDs and CPR training in a community can enormously improve those odds. In communities lacking defibrillators or adequate training, fewer than 10 percent of cardiac arrest victims survive. But where AEDs are available and people are trained to use them, survival rates range from 30 percent to 50 percent.
“Any of us could face the need for CPR,” Mr. Halpern said. “We encourage the community to participate in training that might someday help save a life.”
Funding the AEDs is consistent with other programs JHF has sponsored to create greater awareness about the risks of heart disease and ways to avoid them.Among the most visible is Working Hearts, which was started to promote awareness about women’s cardiac risks.
The AED program also is consistent with JHF’s commitment to health and safety within the Jewish community, which the Foundation supports with more than $3 million in funding, including an annual $900,000 grant to UJF for distribution among its beneficiary agencies.
The UJF agencies that receive the funding and that will be receiving AEDs are the Agency for Jewish Learning; Community Day School; Hillel Academy; the Hillel-Jewish University Center; the Jewish Association on Aging; the Jewish Community Center; Jewish Family & Children’s Service; Jewish Residential Services; Riverview Towers and Yeshiva Schools.