The UofL team is on track to train CPR to 1,000 total health care professionals and other members of the Health Sciences Campus this year. Those numbers have nearly doubled in the past few years, Crawford says, out of necessity.

“Over the last few years, it has become apparent that the CPR training needs of students, staff and faculty of the Health Sciences Campus were not being met,” Crawford said. “Currently, CPR training is available from a variety of sources at varying levels of quality and varying prices. Some of it is done online.”

Crawford doesn’t believe online training is as effective, however. His shop has about 30 adult mannequins for hands-on simulation. But he doesn’t want to make it a competition as much as he wants to raise awareness about the necessity of CPR training in general.

“The cardiac arrest survival rate in our area reveals that current CPR training in our area is a cause of one of the lowest survival rates in the country,” he said. “Our goal is to improve the chances of surviving cardiac arrest. We’d love to train as many people as possible.”

Right now, Crawford and his team train UofL’s medical, nursing and dental students, dental hygienists and other healthcare professionals. CPR training is a required course for those groups. CPR is also required for healthcare professionals who are involved in direct patient care to meet state licensure requirements or institutional policies.

More recently, his team started training UofL Physical Plant employees and non-UofL employees as well. The demands continue to grow and the team keeps itself busy, but that’s the point.

“The goal is to increase the chances of surviving a sudden cardiac arrest and, to meet that goal, it is essential to teach CPR to as many people as possible,” Crawford said. “We can do that because we have a dedicated team of instructors and state-of-the-art equipment. We can do that because we know it’s important. CPR saves lives.”

Dramatic, yes, but it’s a scene that could happen, and it’s the plot of a new CPR training film developed by a University of Louisville doctor. , physician director for resuscitation at and an assistant professor at the UofL School of Medicine, is hoping the novel approach will improve high school CPR training by helping students remember what they have learned by applying it to a real-life situation they can relate to.

CPR instruction in high school is now required by law in a growing number of states. Thirty-nine states have passed laws requiring the training before graduation, including Kentucky, which passed its law in 2016. Similar laws are being considered in the remaining states.

“The goal is to create a real, emotional scenario,” said Brown. “There are so many lives that could be saved if more Americans knew CPR, and we have all of these students coming out of high school with CPR training.”

About 4 million students per year now graduate with CPR training. Brown has studied CPR training in high school, with her work in the . She found CPR skill retention in high school students was poor, with only 30 percent able to perform adequate CPR six months after training. She also found that there was no standard method of implementation.

“We wanted to know, is there a better way to do it?” she said.

That’s where the film comes in. Working with the local and using $10,000 in grant money she received from winning the prestigious Stamler award for young researchers at Northwestern University last October, she modeled the film after one done in the United Kingdom, where CPR training also is required.

The interactive film, designed for classroom use in high schools and shot at by a local film company, forces students to make choices along the way about how to respond. It will be rolled out in local high schools this fall, then Brown will determine whether it improves skill retention. If it does – and Brown said she believes it will – the plan is to expand it across Kentucky and the nation.

“This could be a game-changer in the way CPR is taught in the United States,” she said.

The film used six local high school and college actors, and paramedics from , who brought an ambulance for one scene. In the film, the coach (Brown’s real-life husband, who auditioned for the part) suffers cardiac arrest during basketball practice, and staggers out into the lobby, where he becomes unconscious and falls onto the floor. He is found by a player, who, along with the other students at practice, must call an ambulance and perform CPR on the coach together until the paramedics arrive. The coach regains consciousness, and the students are congratulated by paramedics for saving his life.

In the United States, 350,000 people suffer cardiac arrest outside a hospital each year. Only 30 percent get bystander CPR, which affects whether they survive, Brown said. Only 11 percent of the 350,000 receive CPR. Brown has said that if CPR survival improved by just 1 percent, 3,500 more people would live.

Expanding and improving CPR training has been a personal mission for Brown, who has worked for several years on unique approaches.  These days, effective CPR is hands-only, removing a barrier for some from the old mouth-to-mouth method. She also founded and directs a program called “Alive in 5” (), a 5-minute method of teaching CPR she developed.

The wants to double the percentage of cardiac arrest victims who receive bystander CPR by 2020, and CPR training in high schools has been endorsed by a variety of organizations.

“It’s important that people be willing to act, and that they remember the skills that they’ve learned,” she said. “As most cardiac arrests that don’t occur in a hospital happen in homes, it is likely they will save the life of someone important to them.”

See the filming

To watch a video on the making of the film, click .

The course was made available for the fraternity brothers as part of Pi Kappa Alpha’s overall mission: “developing men of integrity, intellect and high moral character and to fostering a truly lifelong fraternal experience.” Membership development chair, Alex McGrath, and chapter president, Alex Barnum, said it is important to provide their members valuable life skills such as CPR.

“We wanted to give the men life development skills that people should but don’t have,” McGrath said.

 “How better off can you be than to have 20 to 30 people in a room at any given time who have that (CPR training) capability?” Barnum added.

The CPR is just the tip of the iceberg of endeavors pursued by the fraternity. The Kappa Zeta Chapter of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity, commonly known as Pike, joined UofL in 1995. Since then, Pike’s members have regularly volunteered at Cochran Elementary, even creating the Cardinal Club, which provides in-school tutoring and mentorship.

Pike has also raised philanthropic awareness through events such as Spin for Steven and the Fireman Challenge.