By Clayton Gutzmore
A piece of legislation that could save thousands of lives was passed in Congress recently. The Cardiomyopathy Health Education, Awareness, Research and Training in Schools (HEARTS) Act was passed in The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce. This act would help ensure students and school staff are prepared to respond to a cardiac emergency. This victory is enormous for those who have been advocating for this bill to go through.
“To have this bill passed is a very good start. They only had defibrillators in high schools. To have defibrillators in every school in Georgia is amazing to me. The blood, sweat, and tears to get this done have been very moving for me because of the loss of my son,” said Tracy Wilson, Parent advocate for the HEARTS Act.
The HEARTS Act was passed in Congress on March 22. It goes into effect in 2025. The HEARTS Act was initially presented 17 years ago. The act will help prevent cardiac emergencies like heart attacks or cardiac arrests at public schools. Cardiac emergencies can happen anywhere. The solutions to those emergencies are performing CPR or having an automated external defibrillator (AED) available until Medical professionals arrive. Before the HEARTS Act, high schools only had AEDs due to sports; they were not required at middle and elementary schools.
Wilson is one of many parents who lost their child to a cardiac emergency. She became a CPR instructor and advocated for this bill because of the incident with her son. She now equips parents with the correct information to handle cardiac emergencies.
“Imagine being a single mother of two boys and your child, who you thought was a healthy young 14-year-old boy, dies from something that you had not known that he had any problems from birth. I don’t want to see another child go through trauma because there’s no working defibrillator or CPR instructor in the school,”
Wilson lost her 14-year-old son Terell in 2007. He had an aortic dissection, which is a tear in the main artery that runs from your heart to your stomach. It is rare to find this issue in children. Aortic dissection is usually in older adults who put a strain on their heart. Stehapnie Rouse is another mother who advocated for the bill. She lost her 13-year-old son Monty to a cardiac emergency at a Basketball game this year. His cardiac event was preventable because an AED was on site at the game, but the staff did not move quickly enough to retrieve it nor used CPR to save him.
“If the bill was in place, maybe it could have potentially saved my child when he went into cardiac arrest at his basketball game,” said Stephanie Rouse, parent advocate.
“Many people had no idea that several schools didn’t have plans. If they did have an AED, many of them found that it didn’t even work. This prompts people to ask more questions,” said Rouse.
What is next for the HEARTS Act is for the bill to be passed on the federal level. Wilson and other advocates are traveling to Washington, D.C, in May to lobby for this bill to pass to save more lives. Wilson and Rouse encourage parents and individuals to learn about the HEARTS Act and contact their local legislators to support it.
“We’ve lost a lot of children since 2007 from sudden cardiac arrest at very young ages. So this makes a difference, and hopefully, we can get this done in every state so that no child goes unseen,” said Wilson.
“You should support the HEARTS Act because it saves lives. Right now, elementary and middle schools are not required to have an AED or don’t have an emergency response plan. Having the training and knowing what to do when a child becomes unconscious can save a life,” said Rouse.
More information about the HEARTS Act can be found at heart.org.
The post Hearts Act passed in Congress, empowering schools to prevent cardiac emergencies appeared first on The Atlanta Voice.