This post is brought to you by our partners Nicklaus Children’s Hospital.
There is much to cheer about with the arrival of Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA)
Awareness Month this October. Thanks to a collaboration between Nicklaus Children’s
Hospital and Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS), all district-affiliated schools
are now designated “Heart Safe,” and lives are being saved.
As part of an initiative launched in 2022, designated staff at all county public schools
have received Project ADAM sudden cardiac arrest response training. Nicklaus
Children’s Heart Institute is one of only two affiliates of Project ADAM in Florida. Project
ADAM is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing educational programs to help
prevent deaths associated with SCA.
Since becoming the Project ADAM South Florida affiliate in 2022, Nicklaus Children’s
has trained staff at a total of 553 schools, and awarded them the program’s “Heart Safe”
designation. In addition to the MDCPS schools, the hospital has also trained staff
within the School District of Palm Beach County (SDPBC), as well as an additional 42
charter schools throughout Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
“The backbone and mission of Project ADAM is to train a small team of school faculty
on how to respond in the event of a cardiac arrest on campus,” said Melissa Olen, an
advanced practice nurse and manager at Nicklaus Children’s Heart Institute who leads
the Project ADAM initiative. “With training, anyone can save a life,” she added, noting
that students experiencing SCA at a school where personnel have cardiac emergency
readiness training are four times more likely to survive than students at schools without
this training.
Matthew A. Love, president and CEO of Nicklaus Children’s Health System, said, “Nicklaus Children’s is proud to be an affiliate for Project ADAM, providing life-saving tools throughout three counties for the children and families in South Florida. Since our
launch of Project ADAM South Florida, nine lives have been saved in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.”
Among those saved was a 9-year-old boy from Joella C. Good Elementary school in
Hialeah who experienced cardiac arrest at school. In addition, trained staff from Booker
T. Washington Senior High saved a 17-year-old American Heritage School football
player who went into cardiac arrest.
In addition to representing Project ADAM, Nicklaus Children’s is also a leading provider of sports EKG screenings for school-age athletes. EKG testing can identify children at
risk of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) during sporting activities. The hospital has offered
free sports EKG screenings to children and adolescents in the community since 2011
and has screened over 70,000 children. The simple heart screening takes only a few
minutes and can help detect heart conditions that may not be evident in routine school
or sports physical examinations.
For more information on the hospital’s sports EKG screening program and to schedule a screening, visit www.nicklauschildrens.org/EKG.
