The on-field cardiac arrest and subsequent recovery of Buffalo Bills’ player Damar Hamlin in January 2023 drew international attention to the importance of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) use. Immediate Bystander CPR is a critical early step in increasing the odds of survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). However, Black and Hispanic persons in the USA with witnessed OHCA are 26% less likely than White individuals to receive bystander CPR at home and 37% less likely in public.1 Women are also less likely to get CPR than men.2 Research confirms that underserved populations are willing to learn CPR but lack informational and financial resources to seek and undergo CPR training.3
Following Hamlin’s successful resuscitation, two of us (Buffalo Bills’ medical director and University at Buffalo (UB) Orthopaedics department chair LB and his wife, KB, a registered nurse with Master of Business Administration) met with the Buffalo Black Nurses, Inc. (BBNI), a group working in Western New York’s underserved communities, to understand community interest in hands-only CPR/AED training. We also met with the director of UB Orthopaedics’ athletic training programme, which supplies athletic trainers to high schools in underserved communities, to learn whether the athletic trainers would have the time and interest to train their student athletes and family members in …
