More than 350,000 Americans suffer sudden cardiac arrest annually; only 7 percent live to tell about it. Heart Safe Plymouth, launched in September 2012, is increasing that survival rate, one member at a time.
Norm Okerstrom is a lead trainer of Heart Safe for Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and associated with the Plymouth Rotary. His son Teddy is one of the 7 percent—Teddy survived a cardiac episode in June 2009 after collapsing on the football field during a high school game.
“Our whole project goal is to train 7,000 people in Plymouth and encourage people to be more educated about heart attacks and cardiac arrests, especially when they are in the presence of someone having one,” Okerstrom says.
Heart Safe provides one-hour training sessions for CPR and Automated External Defibrillation (AED). “We have each person work on mannequins that have test plates in them, which replicate a real human chest,” trainer and former Heart Safe president Russ Carlson says.
City Council reps were among the first 1,300 members trained through Heart Safe Plymouth. “We’ve earned so many ‘heartbeats’ through training that the Minnesota Department of Health, Allina Health and North Memorial Hospital provided equipment and supplies,” Okerstrom says. Two years after the program’s launch, Plymouth officially became a Heart Safe community last fall, with placards bearing its designation displayed around town.
To reach its goal of 7,000 trained individuals, Heart Safe hopes to maintain attendance at the weekly sessions. “We just want to keep going, because when five or six people show up to the sessions, that’s five or six more people who can perform CPR and use an AED,” Okerstrom says. “If we can save one life, it’s all worth it.”
