IOM Releases Action Steps for Local Governments to Prevent Childhood Obesity 

Study:  More Americans at Higher Risk of Heart Disease

Heart Study Shows Many Suffer Poor Quality of Life

Surprising Rate of Recurring Heart Attacks, Strokes Globally

CPR Celebrates its 50th Anniversary - Get Trained Get Counted

CPR Awareness Week is coming up on June 1-7, 2010!  This exciting promotional week is focused on increasing the number of people trained in bystander CPR as well as AED use.  In celebration, we're trying to reach a goal of training one million people across the country in CPR during June.

Sudden cardiac arrest is the abrupt loss of heart function in a person who may or may not have diagnosed heart disease.  The time and mode of death are unexpected.  It occurs instantly or shortly after symptoms appear.  Each year about 295,000 emergency medical services-treated out-of-hospital cardiac arrest occur in the United States.

The American Heart Association's CPR site has materials and messaging for the national CPR Week - www.americanheart.org/cpr.

IOM Releases Action Steps for Local Governments to Prevent Childhood Obesity

Recognizing that local government officials are eager to address the childhood obesity epidemic, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) produced Local Government Action to Prevent Childhood Obesity, a report that serves as a practical guide for government officials at the city, town, township or county level who want to take action to address healthy eating and active living.  For full details, see:  http://www.rwjf.org/childhoodobesity/product.jsp?id=47908

Study:  More Americans at Higher Risk of Heart Disease

Epidemiologists love to crunch numbers - and Americans, on the whole, love to ignore them.  Even the most health-conscious among us soon grow numb to the storm of statistics warning us about rising levels of obesity or falling levels of exercise or all the other numerical indicators that tell us how unwell we're getting.  But on September 14th, a team of researchers released a new finding that should cause even the most data-weary folks alarm.  Read more here.

Heart Study Shows Many Suffer Poor Quality of Life

The world's largest quality of life study of chronic angina patients attending general practice clinics has revealed that almost one in three experience frequent chest pain, which affects their daily life.  The collaborative project between the University of Adelaide and Servier Australia surveyed more than 2000 chronic angina patients throughout Australia and has been published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.  For the full story, click here.

Surprising Rate of Recurring Heart Attacks, Strokes Globally

Despite many medicines and other treatments for patients with vascular disease, a large international study shows these patients have a surprisingly high rate of recurring events such as strokes, heart attacks and hospitalizations as well as mortality.  Also unexpected:  patients in North America (including the U.S.) experienced an above-average rate of these events.  Patients in Eastern Europe had the highest rate, and those in Australia and Japan had the lowest.  More information can be found at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090831130051.htm