American Heart Association – Southern New England

The American Heart Association has an extraordinary impact through our wide range of lifesaving activities. Here’s how:

Raising awareness and educating Americans — We save lives every day by offering information and education. We pioneered CPR and millions of Americans use our patient education
materials and online tools to help themselves and their loved ones live longer, healthier lives.

Improving patient care — We’re improving the quality of health care by creating best practices for treating heart disease and stroke. Our Get With The Guidelines hospital-based quality improvement program helps heart and stroke patients get the best
treatment consistently. Mission: Lifeline helps patients with the most severe kind of heart attack get the specialized emergency services they need to survive.

Advocating for better health — We advocate for policies that will help all Americans lead healthier lives. Focus areas include: obesity prevention; tobacco control; public funding for research and prevention; healthcare access, cost and quality; acute cardiovascular care and health equity.

Protecting the future — Nearly one in three children and teens in the United States is overweight or obese. We are helping kids develop lifelong healthy habits and working to make sure that
today’s children can grow up to be tomorrow’s healthy adults. We also fund more than $7 million in Pediatric Research nationally to fight congenital heart defects.

Reaching Populations at Risk — Blacks have higher risk and death rates from stroke than whites. Our Power To End Stroke education initiative helps African Americans share information to reduce their risk of stroke. African Americans also have the highest rate of hypertension world-wide. Our community blood pressure initiative
Check. Change. Control. is designed to close the gap in treatment by eliminating high blood pressure as a health disparity among African Americans.