As a member of Parent Heart Watch since its founding in 2005, I have been provided with the opportunity to meet other families who have lost a child to sudden cardiac arrest, build a support network and become a prevention advocate. Parent Heart Watch provides members like me with ongoing training, education, tools and resources, including life-saving AEDs, that I could not afford to create or obtain for my foundation.

The Get Charged Up! Program has been a wonderful resource for our high school. Not only have we been provided a brand new AED for participating in the pilot program, we have been given so much pertinent training and educational materials on sudden cardiac arrest. We also received a helpful toolkit outlining how to set up a Cardiac Emergency Response Plan for our school and guidance in disseminating sudden cardiac awareness prevention information to our staff, school community and parent groups. Many thanks to Parent Heart Watch, Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation, NASN, and so many others who developed this life saving system for schools!

If it wasn’t for Parent Heart Watch, Deb and I would’ve foundered in our loss of Josh. They helped us set a direction, preserve his memory and create a legacy. The very first collaboration event was the genesis for our foundation – we got a baseline model for a heart screening program. They helped us build a mission, and we continue to improve and be informed by their communications.

As an industry leader, Cardiac Science understands the deadly toll sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) takes on our youth. We also know there is a way to stop this needless loss of life. Parent Heart Watch has taken a leadership role in advocating for critical primary and secondary prevention standards to protect young hearts. This is why Cardiac Science supports their vision to eliminate preventable death and disabilities from SCA in youth by 2030 and have proudly partnered with them for 12 years to make it a reality.

After our son died while on a five-mile run with the Marines in Hawaii, we asked to see his EKG. It was a shock to learn that he had never had one when he enlisted and went through medical screening at MEPS, and so his heart condition went undetected. The Lion Heart Heroes Foundation seeks to bring better cardiac screening with EKGs to military recruits. Changing anything in the Department of Defense is impossible without facts and data, and Parent Heart Watch gave us the information we needed to have President Biden sign into the 2022 National Defense Appropriations Act funding for an EKG screening pilot for incoming military academy cadets. We have made so many great connections with other parents and foundations at the annual Heart to Heart Conference each January and it inspires us to continue push the military to evolve the standard of care for their young service men and women.