Colorado

Scott Sholes
Heart Safe La Plata
La Plata County EMS Council
1235 Camino del Rio
Durango, CO 81301
Phone: 970-382-5982
Fax: 970-375-2702

Heart Safe La Plata, a non-profit organization founded in 2003 by four local EMTs, strives to provide safe and effective treatment to cardiac arrest victims by ensuring that a defibrillator reaches a victim in the critical minutes following an event. Heart Safe La Plata has sought funding from the Office of Rural Health Policy to purchase 40 AEDs and place them in innovative locations throughout La Plata County and neighboring San Juan County. The grant will also be used to provide training to personnel for the use of the AEDs and to purchase a computer for data collection and community presentations.

La Plata County is located in Southwestern Colorado, covers 1700 square miles, and is home to approximately 46,000 people. The county's mountainous terrain and remote areas often result in long ambulance transport times. In addition, a diverse and growing population is changing the dynamic of the community and posing new challenges for emergency responders. La Plata County and tiny San Juan County (population: 600) welcome a large number of tourists in different times of the year, and some are physically unprepared for the mountainous conditions. The area is home to many non-English speakers and Native Americans (approximately 15% of the total population), many of whom do not seek or do not have access to adequate preventative care. Heart Safe La Plata will use the PADDP grant to face the challenges posed by the landscape and population diversity by placing the AEDs in innovative locations and reaching out to the different groups in the community.

Colorado

Edward Parry
Summit County Ambulance Service
Summit County Government
PO Box 4910
0227 County Shops Road
Frisco, CO 80443
Phone: 970-668-5777
Fax: 970-668-4146

Summit County is a rural community located high in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Due to its location, the county's economy relies primarily on tourism, for it is the largest skier destination in the state. At high times of the year, the county can experience a five-fold increase in total population. However, these great influxes of tourists cause strain on the emergency response infrastructure of the community.

To provide enhanced delivery of defibrillation and increase the survival chances of cardiac arrest victims, Summit County plans to expand and improve upon its previous efforts to introduce AEDs to the community. Using the PADDP grant, the Summit County Ambulance Service has created a Public Access to Defibrillation Project that consists of three initiatives.

First, the project will purchase 45 AEDs to be placed in all law enforcement patrol vehicles. Training on CPR and AED will be provided to all field and command officers with an AED. Second, the project will identify locations where many people congregate, such as resort communities, conference centers, and golf courses, and place 30 AEDs in these various locations. Finally, the project strives to increase public awareness of the importance of early CPR and AED use through public service announcements on local media outlets as well as offer training courses to the public.

Florida

Allie Grande
Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue
444 Southwest 2nd Avenue, Ste 537
Miami, Florida 33130
Phone: 305-416-1532

Miami-Dade County consists of 1850 square miles, encompasses the City of Miami, and is the most populous in all of Florida, with over 2.3 million residents. The area's congested and overwhelmed highways and high number of non-English speakers are two obstacles fire rescue personnel face in times of emergency. In addition, the area is home to a substantial number of persons over the age of 65 (approximately 13.3% of the county's population). Ventricular Fibrillation affects this age group more than others, so as the number of elderly increases, so does the need for shortened emergency response times. To help overcome the obstacles rescuers face in responding to sudden cardiac arrests, and to address the county's growing need, the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and the City of Miami Fire Rescue collaborated and sought a PADDP grant.

In order to better respond to cardiac arrests and improve the chance of survival for the county's cardiac arrest victims, the Fire Rescue, in the first year of the grant, will place and maintain 82 AEDs as well as instruct approximately 820 people in the community to use and maintain the AEDs. A coordinator will identify "high risk" areas for placement, specifically targeting the elderly population, and will offer training and instruction in different languages. The Fire Rescue will expand its efforts over the three years to reach its goal of deploying an AED within five minutes of a cardiac arrest.

Nebraska

Darrin Lewis
Central Nebraska Public Access Defibrillator Coalition
Buffalo County Emergency Management
PO Box 1270
Kearny, NE 68848-1270
Phone: 308-233-3225
Fax: 308-233-5246

The Central Nebraska Public Access Defibrillator Coalition's (CNPADC) project is to place 130 AEDs in strategic locations across a 20-county area in central Nebraska. This area encompasses approximately 20% of the state's land and 13.2% of the total population. Currently, 90 AEDs are placed throughout these counties; however, because of the sparse population and frequent weather complications, response times to 911 emergency calls can range from 35 minutes to one hour and 25 minutes. Therefore, more AEDs are needed to provide emergency care to the area's rural residents.

With this grant, CNPADC will place 130 additional AEDs in various locations as well as train teams of people at each AED placement site to use and maintain the AED. These trainings of approximately 1,250 people will utilize distance learning technologies and will teach the teams how to keep data records on the use of the AEDs. The CNPADC also believes it is vital to educate the public about the use of AEDs and about their placements in the communities. To accomplish this task, the CNPADC will create and launch a media campaign.