Each year 600,000 Americans suffer from cardiac arrest and 795,000 from strokes. Most of these situations occur outside of a hospital, yet programs for public education on how to handle these emergencies are underfunded or nonexistent.
Emergency preparedness can be the difference between life and death, so it’s important to be prepared. However, while family, friends and bystanders are often the first people on the scene of a medical emergency, they’re also the same people who don’t know how to react.
As a firefighter and EMT, Jared Anderson has seen first-hand the lack of knowledge the average person has on how to respond to emergency situations — a safety problem that can be easily addressed by educating the public.
A bioengineering major in Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, Jared Anderson hopes to facilitate this education in a non-disruptive and accessible way.
To do so, he founded Civilian Medical Response, a nonprofit company that will provide innovative, hands-on workshops that teach the skills necessary to respond to medical emergencies.
The issue with most emergency preparedness courses is that they are often taught in a manner that is unengaging, inconsiderate of people’s time or costs significant money. Civilian Medical Response aims to change this by meeting people where they are and offering workshops that are not only free of charge but also that maximize material retention and time efficiency.
Thus far, he has already developed a preliminary curriculum with the help of emergency response experts and is working on recruiting potential workshop hosts. In the future, he hopes to also offer certifications for people and organizations to demonstrate their preparedness in the face of medical crises.
Long-term, Jared hopes the startup will change the landscape of emergency response education, leading to a more prepared public.
Story by Sasha Temerte ’23, LaunchPad Global Fellow; images supplied