Spanish-speaking CPR Training Kiosk aims to educate the Hispanic community in North Philadelphia

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

At the ribbon cutting event Wednesday, the Maria de Los Santos Health Center welcomed a new life-saving training device aimed at helping Spanish-speaking people learn how to perform CPR.

It is a Spanish-speaking Handley CPR kiosk that teaches people how to help someone with cardiac arrest.

“Walking individuals through various movements, hand placement, and ways to push down and deepen are hard at work to teach them how to do that,” Brenda, serving as Delaware Valley Community Health and Coobble.

The center is the largest provider of healthcare for the Philadelphia Latino community, serving approximately 23,000 patients each year.

“Health centers like this are the pillars of Philadelphia’s neighborhood,” said Dr. Rich Snyder, independent Blue Cross.

A study by the American Heart Association shows that kiosks are strategically located here, as Latinos and Hispanics are 40% less likely to receive CPR from bystanders.

“So being able to remove barriers to access and education and bring kiosks to places where patients are already here is really beneficial in helping to improve onstander response rates that improve cardiac arrest survival,” said Jeffrey Salvatore.

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

“It allows people to get that practical education and emotions. It will become a muscle memory in the hopes of acting in emergencies,” Salvatore said.

He says the kiosks are designed for self-paced learning and are accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds.

“We need to train these CPR skills very badly, so it’s very good,” said Wilfredo Vargas Padilla of North Philadelphia.

Because you don’t know when you’ll have a chance to save your life.

The first thing you do before running CPR is to call 911 and then start a violent and fast chest compression. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is no longer recommended for CPR.

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