Spanish-speaking CPR training kiosk aims to educate Hispanic community in North Philadelphia

Lifesaving training is now available to the Hispanic and Latino community in North Philadelphia.

At Wednesday’s ribbon cutting event, the Maria de los Santos Health Center welcomed a new lifesaving training device aimed at helping people who speak Spanish learn how to perform CPR.

It’s a Spanish-speaking, hands-only CPR kiosk that teaches people how to help someone in cardiac arrest.

“Walking the individual through the different movements, hand placement, how to press down and deeper is instrumental in teaching them how to do it,”  Brenda Robles Cooke with Delaware Valley Community Health said.

This center is the largest provider of health care to the Latino community in Philadelphia, serving about 23,000 patients every year.

“Health centers like this are pillars in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods,” Dr. Rich Snyder with Independent Blue Cross said.

The kiosk is strategically placed here because research from the American Heart Association says Latinos and Hispanics are 40% less likely to receive CPR from a bystander.

“So being able to remove barriers to access and education and bring the kiosk to where patients are already coming is really going to be beneficial in helping us to improve bystander response rates, which will improve cardiac arrest survival rates,” Jeffrey Salvatore with the American Heart Association said.

Salvatore says most people in Philadelphia traditionally don’t perform CPR on strangers. This kind of training aims to reverse that trend.

“It allows people to get that hands-on education and feeling, it’ll be a muscle memory in hopes that they will act in case of an emergency,” Salvatore said.

He says the kiosk is designed for self-paced learning, making it accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds.

“Very good because we people need very badly training in those CPR skills.,” Wilfredo Vargas-Padilla of North Philadelphia said.

Because you never know when you’ll have a chance to save a life.

The first thing to do before performing CPR is call 911, and then start hard, fast chest compressions. Mouth to mouth resuscitation is no longer recommended for CPR.

Stephanie Stahl

Stephanie Stahl is an Emmy Award-winning health reporter. She can be seen daily on CBS News Philadelphia and Philly57.