Bloomington South High School becomes first “Heart Safe School” in South Central Indiana

On Monday, Dec. 11, Riley Children’s Health designated Bloomington South High School as the first Project ADAM Heart Safe School in the Monroe County Community School Corporation (MCCSC).

“This starts MCCSC’s journey to become our second, and largest, fully designated ‘heart-safe’ school district with Project ADAM—Indiana,” said Nickolas Hogan, EMT-P, Riley Children’s Health Injury Prevention and Trauma Services Professional Outreach and Injury Prevention coordinator.

Designated schools undertake initiatives shown to help increase the potential of saving the life of a student, staff, or visitor experiencing a sudden cardiac arrest:

• Awareness and education about sudden cardiac events
• CPR/AED training
• Written Cardiac Emergency Response Plan, reviewed annually
• Cardiac Emergency Response Plan and AED Practice Drills, annually
• AEDs throughout the school campus that are accessible and maintained, ideally within 3 minutes of any location on campus

Bloomington South’s AED boxes also include Narcan and Stop the Bleed resources, ensuring these potentially life-saving tools are readily available in times of crisis.

“Richard Malone, MD, Riley Children’s Health pediatrician, and Acacia Axsom, Bloomington South Health Services Director, have worked diligently toward creating the largest heart-safe school corporation in Indiana to date,” said Adam Kean, MD, MPH, FHRS, a pediatric cardiologist at Riley Children’s Health. “We are very excited about participating in this effort and celebrating the Project ADAM Heart-Safe School designation.”

The last phase of Bloomington South’s designation was a drill observed by Dr. Malone, Dr. Kean and Hogan. Within 2 minutes and 15 seconds, the school’s safety teams had the AED communicating with Timothy (their test subject and CPR medical simulator), beating the 3-minute goal.

With this accomplishment, Bloomington South High School joins the ranks of 10 other Indiana schools that have achieved this heart-safe designation.