Tag Archives: american heart association

Teaching Kids to be Heroes

Today, I was excited to be a part of a group from the American Heart Association that went to Blossom Valley Elementary School in Los Gatos to help teach the kids how to do hands only CPR.

It was quite an assembly. Also attending were several county councilpersons, the superintendent and many fired and EMS workers. Santa Clara County is working on putting automated external defibrillators (AEDs) n all of their schools. We were at Blossom Valley to talk to the kids about the AED and to show them how to use it.

Three of the five fifth grade classes participated in the assembly. I love fifth graders! They are interested and smart and fun. They were excited to learn the process and they were all really good at it. I walked around, along with the other adults, to make sure they had their hands positioned correctly, were pumping the Manikins correctly, etc.

The Manikins that were used are like the ones in the Family and Friends CPR Anytime kit.

The cool thing is that these kits can be purchased for your own home use so your fifth grader can learn how to properly do CPR, too!

Once the kids learned how to do the hands only CPR, the AED instructions were added in an they practiced that. I think they kids learned really well the subject matter they were supposed to learn. They had fun doing it and I’m sure that if they ever need to help someone, they will be able to!

Save Lives California Tobacco Rally

On Wednesday morning, bright and early, I carpooled with two other folks from the American Heart Association up to the state capitol in Sacramento. We were joining the many other groups that make up the Save Lives California Coalition for a tobacco rally.

A special session was held to approve a package of six tobacco bills.

The package included:

SBX2-5/ABX2-6, which would add electronic cigarettes to the existing definition of tobacco products;
SBX2-6/ABX2-7, which would add hotel lobbies, small businesses, break rooms and tobacco retailers to the list of smoke-free workplaces under state law;
SBX2-7/ABX2-8, which would increase the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products to 21 years old;
SBX2-8/ABX2-9, which would require all schools in the state to be tobacco-free;
SBX2-9/ABX2-10, which would allow local jurisdictions across the state to tax tobacco; and
SBX2-10/ABX2-11, which would create an annual Board of Equalization tobacco licensing fee program (California Healthline, 7/17).

Cigarette smoke related disease is the most preventable cause of death. The measures above should not only save money to the California health care system, it will also save lives.

The day started with a press conference in the park.

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Then we were broken up into groups and we visited the lawmakers on our list asking them to consider supporting the bills, giving them the reasons they should support them, and sharing our personal stories.

My group included Jang, a heart attack, stroke, survivor, heart, kidney transplant wonderman and three medical students from UCSF: Rachel, Iris and David.

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It took us a while to get cleared to go into the building.

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But when we did, my group and I visited all of the lawmakers on our list. I thought we did a great job of presenting our case and were received very well. Then Jang and I decided to visit one of our local assemblymen. He hadn’t received a visit from anyone so we were happy we stepped outside the box on that decision. 🙂

I read this morning that the bills passed the Senate. I hope they will become laws and more control will be placed on the smoking and second hand smoking here in California.

Oklahoma coolness

TNRAXBEW4FRY
I was driving to Tulsa the other day for a meeting. The radio was on but I was only loosely listening to it while my mind was wandering over my busy schedule. I remember hearing something, and I can’t at this moment even remember what, that was really cool and it was happening in Oklahoma.

I remember thinking, “Wow! I can’t believe I live in Oklahoma” and “Who knew there were going to be such cool things here?”

I was invited to go on (what I call) a field trip to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) on Thursday. It was a staff visit for the AHA staff members and I was happy they included me because I was so excited to go.

I am not scientifically smart. Oh, I think I have a lot of street smarts and I’m definitely not dumb but scientists are another whole realm. I think that if I could have understood math and science, I definitely would have had a career in science.

Ahhh but I digress.

In the entry way, there was a beautiful replica of a cell in the marble.

And several more large “cells” suspended from the ceiling.

They were amazing and looked like art.

First we saw a video presentation about the new facility that they are in the process of building. It will cost $125 million and it will be the most energy efficient building when it’s done.

Here’s what it will look like then.

See the wind turbines at the top? Each turbine is made to look like a DNA helix. This is how it looks now.

They have a way to go but already you can see how magnificent the building will be when it’s finished.

We then went to visit Dr. Rheal Towner who told us about the MRI research they are doing with extremely powerful MRI devices.

Next was Dr. Dean Dawson who works with chromosomes. He was funny and passionate about his work. He said they use yeast to do a lot of experiments with because, other than the fact that there is no brain, a yeast cell is fairly close to a human cell. He showed us an example of how they forced a yeast chromosome to split the way a chromosome for Downs Syndrome would split. Next, they will attempt to make it do the same thing with mice.

Our final visit was to Dr. Charles Esmon.

Dr. Esmon is the one person we met who has actually benefitted from funds raised by the American Heart Association. His story of coming up with Protein C to save people with extreme poisoning of the blood was mind bogglingly cool. He also told us that without fundraising organizations like the AHA, much of this research could not be done.

I am really so happy that I was asked to go along on this visit. While a good portion of what they told us probably sailed right over my head, it was clear that these intelligent and dedicated scientists are changing the world as we know it.

And guess what? They are right here in Oklahoma. How cool. 🙂

TNRAXBEW4FRY