Damar Hamlin shows the importance of CPR. Due to disparities, his outcome isn’t the norm. | Expert Opinion

Damar Hamlin is alive. Not only is he alive, but he is home; he attended a Buffalo Bills playoff game last month and has spoken publicly.

Let the gravity of that sink in.

After his heart stopped beating on national television, after his teammates mourned while he lay lifeless on the ground, and after spending nearly one week in the ICU, he is home. The sole reason for this miraculous recovery is because Hamlin received high-quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR.

» READ MORE: NFL players like Damar Hamlin aren’t paid enough, given the danger of football

CPR saves lives. Yet nationally, only 46% of people whose heart stops somewhere outside a hospital receive CPR. And Black people, who are twice as likely as white people to experience a sudden cardiac arrest, are less likely than white people to receive CPR from a bystander. This is regardless of if they are at home, in a public location, in a predominantly white neighborhood, or in a predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhood. Unfortunately, this trend is seen even here in Philadelphia, where those who live in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods are less likely to receive CPR than those living in white neighborhoods, and 44% less likely to survive.

While these racial disparities in who gets to benefit from CPR may be jarring to some, to me they are no surprise.

I am an emergency medicine resident physician in West Philadelphia. In my work in the emergency department and the intensive care unit, most patients I have taken care of whose hearts stopped did not get CPR until the paramedics arrived.

Most either do not survive or survive with significant brain damage. Of the few patients who I have seen make a full neurological recovery from an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, most have been white. The data match my experience — after a cardiac arrest in public, 28.9% of white people make a full recovery, vs. only 17.5% of Black and Hispanic people.

“Why do we see such disparities in CPR?”

So why do we see such disparities in CPR? This is partially due to the continuous barriers to public education about witnessing a cardiac arrest, and how to administer CPR quickly. I grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Baltimore, and I never learned how to provide CPR until I was a medical student, yet many of my fellow students who are white knew what to do. They had learned these skills long before medical school.

The paucity of resource allocation in communities of color — such as the lack of Spanish-speaking 911 dispatchers who can communicate instructions on how to administer CPR over the phone to callers when someone experiences a cardiac arrest, and the lack of public investment in CPR training — exacerbates these disparities. These are all offshoots of structural and systemic racism.

Lastly, there is an element of implicit bias, when bystanders (regardless of race) more quickly recognize the need for CPR when the patient is white.

CPR saves lives. In order to fight these disparities, we must bring communities of color what they often lack: awareness and training.

In 2019, Pennsylvania began to require CPR training to graduate high school, but this is not enough. CPR training needs to be brought directly — and regularly — to churches, recreation centers, and schools in communities of color. Outreach to community leaders, such as those in nonprofit organizations and religious leaders, can guide how to increase the attendance and uptake of CPR training in their own neighborhoods.

I recently partnered with a local nonprofit organization, the Philadelphia Black Women’s Health Alliance, to bring CPR training directly to the places that need it most. In an upcoming health equity summit, I will facilitate a workshop focused solely on CPR administration, and how to determine if someone is having a cardiac arrest outside of the hospital.

Our goal through this workshop is to increase awareness regarding the importance of CPR in Black and Hispanic women and girls of all ages, and slowly bridge that educational gap, while garnering continued community interest for future CPR workshops through this organization.

These are only the first small steps to fight these disparities in Philadelphia, but they are still steps forward. Long-term progress requires continued investment, both in resources and commitment, into communities of color.

Damar Hamlin survived because he was surrounded by a trained care team who quickly recognized a cardiac arrest and administered high-quality CPR as soon as possible.

Everybody deserves the same treatment.

Let’s use his story to reframe the approach to CPR in our neighborhoods. If we can equip individuals in communities of color with the skill set to quickly administer high-quality CPR, then we can begin to chip away at the disparities that lead to shorter life expectancies for Black and Hispanic people in Philadelphia.

Ogechi Nwodim is an emergency medicine resident physician at Penn Medicine.