Race plays role in CPR, study finds
Analysis: Children less likely to get bystander aid in predominantly black neighborhoods
Black children are less likely than their white peers to receive bystander CPR, according to a study by the American Heart Association.
The analysis found that white children received bystander CPR in 56.9 percent of cardiac arrest cases, while black children received CPR in 39.3 percent of cases.
The study, published last month in the Journal of the American Heart Association, analyzed data from the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival. It looked at nontraumatic out-of-hospital heart attacks in children and analyzed about 7,000 cardiac arrests from 2013 to 2017.
“What we found was that children are less likely to survive if they have a cardiac arrest in a neighborhood that is predominantly African American,” said Dr. Richard Bradley, one of the study’s authors. “It also coordinates with your economic level.”
The analysis also looked at how neighborhood characteristics were coordinated with bystander CPR rates. Using racial composition, unemployment rates, high school graduation rates and median income, the researchers gave each neighborhood an index from one to four.
Neighborhoods that were more than 80 percent black, had greater than 10 percent unemployment, less than 80 percent had graduated high school, and a median income of less than
$50,000 were given an index of four. As the index of the neighborhood increased, black children had increasingly lower rates of receiving bystander CPR. White children had similar rates across neighborhoods with different indexes.
Bradley, chief of emergency medical services and disaster medicine at UTHealth McGovern Medical School in Houston, said it’s not fully clear why the racial disparity exists. The next steps include figuring ways to decrease the inequalities in bystander CPR and increase survival rates, he said. Additionally, as the data used for the study only covers about a third of the country, it is also important to work to encourage more reporting of cardiac arrests, Bradley said.
“We need to increase the rate of bystander CPR,” he said.
Dr. Bentley J. Bobrow, chief of emergency medicine at UTHealth, said UTHealth is looking to set up “a large statewide CPR bystander campaign.”
This project will likely include public safety announcements, training events and school programs. Bobrow also lead efforts to bring the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival also known as CARES to UTHealth. The registry will track data about cardiac arrests across the country.
Bobrow said racial and neighborhood differences in bystander CPR may be a result of lack of resources. “In many public health problems, people that are in socioeconomic areas that are disadvantaged, they have worse outcomes, they have less access to care.”
Additionally, as CPR classes can be costly, people may not be able to afford training, Bobrow said.
Dr. David Markenson, chief medical officer for American Red Cross and a co-author of the study, said the organization has tools which can help make CPR more accessible to people with low incomes.
“We are reviewing the results of the recent survey and will be exploring opportunities to see how we can help address this disparity,” he said in a written response to Houston Chronicle questions. “Meanwhile, we don’t want to deter people from taking training and offer discounts for those in need and the free American Red Cross First Aid App so people can learn how to perform CPR and other lifesaving skills.”
Though doing CPR can seem intimidating, Bobrow said, it’s an important skill to learn.
“The key thing to remember is CPR saves lives and it’s really necessary that everyone learns CPR and is able and willing to do CPR,” he said. “You can’t really mess it up. You have to be willing to try.”