Mission

The Rotary-Kerber HeartSafe Community Campaign’s Mission is to increase the survival rate of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) victims in Johnson County by motivating laypersons to intervene effectively using cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and an automated electronic defibrillator (AED).

Read more about our goals for each year below or visit our Annual Reports page for additional details.

Goals

Year One Goals (2020)

Inspired by Dr. Richard E Kerber (1939-2016), UI Professor of Cardiology and a founder of the American Heart Association (AHA) cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) guidelines, the worldwide gold standard, the Rotary-Kerber HeartSafe Community Campaign identified six ambitious goals for our first year (2020):

  1. raise awareness of the well-established benefits of immediate bystander CPR, supplemented by automated external defibrillation (AED) placement/use, and 911 linkage to emergency response services (EMS) to save lives from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA),
  2. train and certify 10 Rotarian health professionals as CPR and AED trainers,
  3. offer educational presentations, via Rotarian HeartSafe Community presenters, and free CPR/AED training to Iowa City/Coralville service clubs and Consultation of Religious Community (CRC) member organizations,
  4. collaborate with local business associations to electronically survey their members regarding CPR/AED availability, desire for purchasing an AED and CPR training, which will be offered free to small businesses,
  5. use social media and crowdsourcing, in cooperation with the City of Iowa City and City of Coralville Fire/Police Departments, to identify community AEDs and to use Google Maps to pinpoint all AEDs in all community public and private locations,
  6. develop and maintain an interactive and dedicated Rotary website for easy access to Google Maps for all AED locations, CPR and AED information, to summarize project data collection, and to document progress toward project goals in real-time.

The hope was that these efforts would materially assist the City of Iowa City and City of Coralville to become level 5 Certified HeartSafe Communities, and  serve as a Rotary model for other district and national Rotary clubs to work with their own communities to achieve these same goals. Most importantly our aim was to directly address local community needs for those most vulnerable to SCA, incrementally save lives in the Iowa City and Coralville communities and, over time, help achieve the goal of becoming among the nation’s best prepared and certified HeartSafe Communities (60%+ survival).

Year Two Goals (2021)

  • Raise community-wide awareness about the epidemic of sudden cardiac arrest.
  • Provide via iowaheartsafe.org virtual CPR and AED training.
  • Provide AEDs through cost-sharing to nonprofits.
  • Provide combination-lock, heated AED enclosures for 24/7 public AEDs.
  • Partner with the Johnson County Ambulance Service to sponsor PulsePoint.
  • Provide layperson education through iowaheartsafe.org and via social media.

Year Three Goals (2022)

  • Return to CPR training, with immunication and masks, when COVID-19 abates.
  • Purchase and distribute 20 AED kits for indoor installation.
  • Purchase and distribute 20 AED kits for outdoor installation.
  • Implement our small and large employer cost-sharing program.
  • Distribute “AED Inside” front door stickers for all Johnson County AEDs.
  • Sponsor an AED Treasure Hunt to locate previously undetected AEDs in Johnson County.
  • Promote and enroll 500 CPR-trained laypersons to acquire the PulsePoint app.
  • Promote co-sponsorship of the Campaign by other Rotary Clubs within District 6000.
  • Raise $50,000 to support all Campaign components.

Archives

For other organizations looking to run a similar campaign in your community, we are creating a Google Drive archives folder. This folder has various key pieces of information we feel was helpful in our campaign.

We continue to update the archive as the campaign progresses. Please contact us with any questions.

Click here:  Rotary-Kerber HeartSafe Campaign Archive on Google Drive