The Harbor emergency Department is collaborating with the Gardena and Compton communities, the local fire departments and EMS agency, as well as various organizations to improve survival from cardiac arrest in Gardena and Compton.

Our goal is to identify current barriers to survival from cardiac arrest, to determine potential tools for overcoming these barriers, and to implement programs in partnership with community members as well as the Cities’ civic and governmental leadership to improve survival rates from cardiac arrest. Several knowledge gaps exist that prohibit the development of these programs currently. Little is known about your community’s specific needs and attitudes or perceived barriers to bystander Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) use.

Additionally, knowledge gaps in CPR/AED training and the acceptability of CPR/AED training have not been well defined, highlighting the importance of qualitatively exploring the community members’ perspectives prior to developing culturally appropriate, community-centered interventions. This assessment can also help identify gaps in public access to AEDs and determine the optimal locations for their placement.

We are currently looking for community organizations like yours to partner with us to host and conduct small focus groups and/or semi-structured qualitative interviews with a goal of 50 community members from each city within the first 6 months. Then partner with our team to analyze the data, identify themes, and brainstorm the interventions we will implement together in phases 2 and 3. We have funding to support the work at different levels depending on the projected involvement.

Requirements: 24 slides