FY11 Preview
Medtronic is increasingly focusing its philanthropic activities on initiatives that have the potential to create systemic change and improvements in public health by bringing all our corporate assets to bear on a particular social health issue.
An example is our HeartRescue program, which tackles one of the leading causes of death in the United States – sudden cardiac arrest (SCA).
Leveraging Corporate Assets to Increase U.S. SCA Survival Rates
In the past decade, the Medtronic Foundation’s HeartRescue program helped develop and fund some of the most cutting-edge awareness and training programs in the United States to save lives otherwise lost to SCA.
Despite individual program success and improvements in overall cardiac care in the United States, more than 160,000 Americans will suffer a full cardiac arrest away from a hospital this year and less than 8 percent will survive – nearly the same percentage as 30 years ago.
Real improvement in national survival rates requires a major shift in how SCA is recognized, treated and reported. Medtronic is committed to leading this initiative, reporting on our progress, and creating measurable impact. In the spring of 2010 we began working with a select number of premier partners in a limited number of states to create a replicable data-driven, systems-based model that can be rolled out in communities across the country.
To influence public policy and develop a scientifically viable approach to increasing SCA survival rates, we are leveraging key corporate assets, including funding, skilled volunteering, public relations and communications, and advocacy.
Pilot programs using a systems-based approach, which simultaneously coordinates SCA training and technologies for the general public, first responders (police/fire), and emergency medical services (ambulance), as well as for effective post-resuscitation care in the hospital, have already proved to be successful. A three-year pilot led by Medtronic Foundation grantee Take Heart America nearly doubled survival rates in two Minnesota communities between 2005 and 2007.
Our long-term vision for HeartRescue includes increasing SCA survival rates by 50 percent over the next five years in the geographies we fund; building a state-by-state reporting mechanism that allows for consistent, reliable, and valid collection and reporting of SCA incidence and survival data; and eventually replicating the program in other countries.