In honor of National CPR and AED Awareness Week, Foundation Donates Free AEDs to Winning Schools
Pittsburgh, PA–The SCA Foundation today announced the winners of its first video contest designed to raise awareness of sudden cardiac arrest. The student competition drove teams from across the country to submit videos about the importance of CPR and automated external defibrillator (AED) use, and empowering students to make a difference in helping to save lives.
The Grand Prize Winner is St. Francis de Sales Catholic School in Salisbury, Maryland. The SCA Foundation will award the school with a new AED, three CPR Anytime™ kits, and a Nintendo Wii game system.
“We are a small school with limited resources and an emerging health program,” said St. Francis de Sales School Nurse Andrea Maione. “An AED was on the top of our must-have list to ensure our emergency preparedness. We are so thrilled to have won, as the AED will serve not only the students, faculty and staff or our school, but through our onsite community parish center, where many events are held, it will also be available to our broader community.”
Teams of students wrote, filmed, starred in and edited their own 3–5 minute videos promoting the importance of CPR and AED use. The SCA Foundation panel of judges reviewed the entries for their overall message, creativity, originality, degree of student participation and likelihood to raise awareness.
Finalists were posted on the SCA Foundation’s website (www.sca-aware.org/schools) and on its YouTube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/SCAFoundation) and promoted to schools nationwide.
While technical accuracy was not a key focus in the judging, one of the objectives of the contest and its prizes is to encourage the development—through awareness and training—of potentially life-saving skills.
“Sudden cardiac arrest can strike anyone at any time, including students, teachers and community members in schools and playing fields across the nation,” said Mary Newman, president of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation. “When our youth and their leaders embrace the opportunity to get trained in CPR and AED use, we begin to foster the growth of a new generation of people who are ready, willing and able to help in the event of sudden cardiac emergencies. Ultimately, this generation has the power to increase survival from the nation’s leading cause of death.”
Additional winners include:
Elementary School Category:
First Place: Regina Coeli Elementary School, Hyde Park, NY
Middle School Category:
First Place: St. Francis de Sales Catholic School, Salisbury, MD
Second Place: JR Gerrits Middle School, Kimberly, WI
Third Place: Regina Coeli Middle School, Hyde Park, NY
Secondary School Category:
First Place: Plano High School, Plano, Texas
Second Place: Franklin County Technical School, Turners Falls, Mass.
College Category:
First Place: Carroll University/University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
(created for Elm Brook Public Schools, Elm Brook, IL)
The First Place winners will receive an AED and a CPR Anytime kit. Second Place winners will receive a $200 gift card and a CPR Anytime kit. Third Place winners will receive a $100 gift card and a CPR Anytime kit. The awarded AEDs were donated by Cardiac Science and ZOLL Medical Corporation, both sponsors of the Foundation’s You Can Save a Life at School™ awareness campaign.
About the SCA Foundation
The Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) Foundation is a national non-profit 501(c)3 organization based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Its mission is to serve as an information clearinghouse and social marketing force focused on raising awareness about sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), and stimulating attitudinal and behavioral changes that will help save more lives. Initiatives include an online registry for SCA survivors, an online community for people affected by SCA, an awareness campaign for schools, and the "People Saving People" awards. The SCA Foundation maintains a national database of survivors and experts available to speak with the media. For more information, visit http://www.sca-aware.org.
CONTACT:
Carissa B. Caramanis O’Brien
, Red Box Communications for SCA Foundation
, Phone: 978-875-2020,
Email: carissao@redboxcommunications.com
, Twitter: @carissao
www.sca-aware.org/sca-newsroom
#CPRweek
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