The Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation (SCAF), a national nonprofit organization based in Pittsburgh, PA, is pleased to announce the launch of an affiliate in Oregon.
An estimated 2,200 people experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in Oregon each year. SCAF-Oregon aims to:
- Form support groups for survivors and family members following OHCA
- Coordinate celebration of life events to honor survivors of OHCA and their rescuers
- Sponsor programs within communities to strengthen the chain of survival, in particular, citizen CPR and public access defibrillation
- Sponsor programs and provide assistance to EMS agencies and hospitals with efforts such as the Resuscitation Academy
- Work with community leaders to enhance the uptake of efforts such as PulsePoint and PulsePoint VR to improve response to suspected OHCA in public and private locations
- Lobby city and state legislators to develop infrastructure, create policies and pass legislation aimed to improve survival from OHCA.
SCAF-Oregon will be led by Katherine Lupton, MS Ed; Joshua Lupton, MD, MPH, MPhil, Clinical Instructor and Research Fellow, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU); and nationally renowned resuscitation researcher Mohamud Daya, MD, MS, Professor of Emergency Medicine, OHSU.
Dr. Lupton is not only a researcher who studies cardiac arrest: He has a personal connection, having survived OHCA while running in a half-marathon when he was a medical student at Johns Hopkins University. He wrote about his experience in an article published in Annals of Emergency Medicine.
“Katherine and I are delighted to have the opportunity to lead an affiliate of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation in Oregon,” said Dr. Lupton. “As a survivor, attending celebrating life events and meeting with other survivors like myself has been very impactful. We hope that creating an affiliate in Oregon will allow an avenue for survivors to meet, celebrate, and support one another, as well as contribute to local efforts to improve survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.”
Henry Jampel, MD, MHS, Johns Hopkins University Professor of Ophthalmology and Chair of the SCAF Board of Directors—who is also an SCA survivor—applauds the development, which will strengthen SCAF’s mission and expand its reach. “We are excited to establish the Oregon Affiliate of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation,” said Dr. Jampel. “I had the privilege of meeting Josh when he was a medical student at Johns Hopkins. I invited him to my office, we traded survivor stories, and he told me about his desire to make a difference. In just a few short years, he and his wife are already making a huge difference.”
For more information, contact SCAFOregon [at] sca-aware.org.