UND re-designated ‘Cardiac Ready Campus’ by North Dakota Department of Health & Human Services

“The North Dakota Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) acknowledges that the University of North Dakota has successfully completed the designation criteria for becoming a Cardiac Ready Campus.”

With that declaration by North Dakota’s HHS, UND was officially reaccredited as the only college campus in the state recognized as a “Cardiac-Ready Campus” for having all the tools and processes in place to significantly improve cardiac event outcomes.

In 2016, the North Dakota Division of Emergency Medical Systems & Trauma partnered with the American Heart Association (AHA) to provide the Cardiac-Ready Community program through the North Dakota Cardiac System of Care. The program, which promotes the AHA’s “Chain of Survival,” is designed to promote survival from a cardiac event by making sure communities are prepared to respond and assist if an individual has a cardiac event.

UND was first given the cardiac-ready designation in 2019 after a team of faculty, staff, and students at the university expanded the infrastructure designed to help anyone experiencing a cardiac event on campus survive that event.

Such infrastructure included purchasing and placing more automated external defibrillators (AEDs) on the UND campus; expanding its basic life support (BLS) and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training of faculty, staff, and students; hosting blood pressure screening events; contributing to UND’s SafeCampus app (which includes a map of AED locations on campus); and coordinating efforts with several community partners, including Altru Health System, on cardiac event prevention.

“After becoming the first Cardiac Ready Campus in the state of North Dakota, we faced many challenges through COVID to rebuild our team and meet our goals,” said Dr. Bryan Delage, faculty in UND’s Department of Family & Community Medicine and chair of the university’s Cardiac Ready Committee. “This team met, kept up the work, and pushed through to continue to advance AED availability, CPR training, blood pressure screening, and doing some great community awareness events. We have a lot to be proud of and have the designation letter as testimony to our perseverance.”

Although the COVID-19 pandemic hampered cardiac ready efforts at the university from 2020-2022, through similar efforts over the past few years, Delage’s committee was able to win re-designation from HHS.

Requirements to maintain the cardiac-ready status include continued community leadership, an ongoing community awareness campaign, additional blood pressure screenings (including referrals for blood pressure management and education on lifestyle change), continuing education of the community on CPR and AED use, expansion of public access to AEDs, and development of a performance improvement program.

“Like much of the U.S., the leading cause of death in North Dakota remains heart disease,” said Dr. Marjorie Jenkins, dean of the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences and UND’s vice president for Health Affairs. “We have a huge opportunity right here at UND to make a difference by helping change this narrative. Congratulations to Dr. Delage and his team – this is an important initiative for our state.”

The re-designation will last through 2028.