Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a significant cause of death worldwide and in Canada, approximately 40,000 occur each year; that's one every 13 minutes. Although past efforts have nearly doubled survival rates for OHCA victims, the current average rate remains very low at approximately 10%. We know from research that a victim that receives CPR from someone nearby has 4 times better chances of surviving than those that don't, however the rates of bystander CPR are also alarmingly low, only 30-40% of OHCA victims receive CPR before emergency medical services arrive. Our team has been discussing the idea of building a prospective, web-based national registry of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest witnesses. We feel it is the time to have a formal "think tank" in order to plan the implementation and evaluation of the "Canadian Cardiac Arrest Witness Registry" project and bring together important stakeholders and end users. The goal of this meeting is to have a rich, multi-perspective discussion about the viability and details of building an OHCA Witness Registry that will ultimately lead to a funding proposal outline. We will bring together key stakeholders from across Canada as well as international experts in bystander CPR and several previous OHCA witnesses in order to really be able to think about the implementation and evaluation of this project from all angles. The Witness Registry has tremendous potential to be the perfect vehicle for a variety of types of citizen engagement that involve two-way exchange driven by the public themselves. Most importantly this meeting will allow us to bring together a diverse group of citizens, not just the usual stakeholders, for ongoing dialogue, deliberation and collaboration to inform our bystander CPR research agenda moving forward.