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Proud Member of the NFL’s Smart Heart
Sports Coalition
A collaboration to affect cardiac emergency preparedness in schools and youth sports.
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Learn Life-Saving Skills From Home
Use new technology to be prepared to save a life and you'll support our mission to protect young hearts!
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Sudden Cardiac Death in youth is preventable!
But that doesn’t happen by chance. Take the Prevention Promise now to prepare yourself and your community to save a life.
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Call Push Shock
Parent Heart Watch and the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation have teamed up during CPR/AED Awareness Week to empower you to save the life of a sudden cardiac arrest victim.
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SCA is the #1 killer
of student athletes
Active youth are at greater risk for Sudden Cardiac Arrest. Make sure their heart is ready to play—get a heart screening.
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Contributes to #2 medical
cause of death under age 25SCA strikes the equivalent of nearly one youth every hour, each day, year after year. Find out what you can do to protect young hearts.
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Leading cause of death on school campuses
Cardiac Emergency Response Plans Save Lives
Create a culture of preparedness at your school by having a written and well-practiced CERP with CPR-trained staff and accessible AEDs.
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1 in 300 youth is at risk
for an undetected heart condition72% of youth stricken by SCA had at least one symptom before the event—they just didn’t recognize it as life threatening.
The Reality of SCA in Youth

1 LOSS

2 SAVES
BASED ON NEWS STORIES THIS YEAR,
AND ONLY A FRACTION OF ACTUAL EVENTS
Our Mission
Parent Heart Watch is the national organization solely dedicated to protecting children and young adults from
sudden cardiac arrest and preventable sudden cardiac death by educating and advocating for change.
What We’re Doing About it

1,145,513
YOUTH SCREENED

835,756
CPR/AED TRAINED

11,697
AEDs PLACED
How You Can Help Us Protect Young Hearts
Stories of Survival and Loss
Zac Mago
After losing our perfectly healthy 17-year-old son to an undetected heart condition in 2018, I was at a loss for answers. Zac passed every well check, pre-participation sports physical and in 2014 a pediatric heart exam including an ECG and full Echo, which came back normal. The autopsy provided few answers. The call I made to PHW changed our lives. Martha answered the phone and said, “honey, what did the autopsy say?” I told her and she said, “that is called sudden cardiac arrest.” In one conversation Martha explained what doctors before had not. To say PHW has changed our lives is an understatement. We founded the Zac Mago Foundation to provide heart screenings to our youth. This endeavor was made possible through the resources and support provided by PHW. Being a member of this organization brought people into our lives that understood SCA and helped us realize that SCA is not RARE. I love that PHW provides a balance between loss and life. Without the PHW family, I would most likely still be searching for answers.
Salim Idriss, MD, PhD
The CSRC launched an initiative two years ago to establish a sustainable national resource related to prevention of SCA/SCDY. Parent Heart Watch has been a key collaborative partner from the inception of this initiative, given their national presence and knowledge and commitment to SCA/SCDY prevention. PHW continues to take a leadership role in our efforts to create a national screening standard. They are instrumental in leveraging input from community screening foundations, especially as we embark on a landmark pilot study to unify screening data collection practices and establish what is normal in ECG interpretation in youth.
Heather MacLeod
It has been a privilege to work with Parent Heart Watch on educating families and health care providers about better investigation of young sudden deaths including saving appropriate samples for genetic testing and collecting family history information. Through these efforts local and national projects are more informed and will enable more detailed information to be compiled to help prevent future deaths within families affected by young sudden death, better understand the causes of young sudden deaths and reduce preventable deaths in all children.
Stewart Krug
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.
Lori Peters, Senior Marketing Manager, Marketing 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.
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Louis J. Acompora Memorial Foundation
Aidan's Heart Foundation
Cody Stephens Go Big or Go Home Memorial Foundation
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Dominic A. Murray 21 Memorial Foundation
Eric Paredes Save A Life Foundation
Lion Heart Heroes Foundation
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Matthew Mangine, Jr. Foundation
Justin Carr Wants World Peace
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Fiorelli Family
Anderson Family
Okerstrom Family
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Zac Mago Foundation
MEMBER GIFTS