HHS Office of Minority Health Awards Grants to Help Reduce Cardiac Arrest Disparities Through Data Registries

HHS Office of Minority Health Awards Grants to Help Reduce Cardiac Arrest Disparities Through Data Registries

Washington, D.C. – The Office of Minority Health (OMH) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced the selection of the University of Vermont and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences as the awardees for a new initiative to help reduce cardiac arrest disparities.

The Reducing Cardiac Arrest Disparities through Data Registries Initiative will support two demonstration projects to determine whether participation in an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) registry helps identify racial and ethnic minority and/or disadvantaged populations that experience cardiac arrest disparities. These projects will also implement evidence-informed interventions to improve cardiac arrest survival rates.

In the United States, 350,000 annual cases of OHCA account for 50% of all cardiovascular deaths. On average, only 10% of patients survive to hospital discharge, and there are large regional variations that, in part, are explained by health inequities. Blacks and Hispanics have lower age-adjusted survival from OHCA compared to whites. However, survival outcomes are increased by nearly 75% in as little as three years in communities that begin tracking their OHCA cases via registry participation. OHCA registries provide surveillance and reporting to help increase state accountability and promote actions to improve cardiac arrest outcomes.

The OMH-funded projects will implement state-level processes for contributing to an OHCA data registry, including data collection on emergency cardiac care by emergency medical services and outcomes through hospital discharge. Using data from the OHCA registry, projects will describe the state cardiac arrest rate of occurrence by race and ethnicity and other related factors. The projects will also enhance the capacity of the state health agencies to implement and sustain evidence-informed interventions that significantly improve health outcomes of individuals who experience OHCA.

For additional information, visit: minorityhealth.hhs.gov.

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