Statistics show that women and communities of color are less likely to receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation after cardiac arrest. Dr. Sylvia Owusu-Ansah is the emergency medical services director at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and co-founder of Akoma United, an organization with the mission to save lives, especially in communities of color, and goal to empower everyday people to use CPR. She shares why it's important and reminds us that there’s no liability when doing CPR. Listen to the episode or read the transcript.

Wearing a lot of hats

Dr. Sylvia Owusu-Ansah grew up around the world. She was born in Lexington, KY, then moved to New Hampshire, southwest Africa for most of her high school career, then Boston, and then Rochester University for her undergraduate degree. She says she was one of those kids who knew what she wanted to be from the age of 7: “I always wanted to be a doctor.”

In spite of disturbing and contradictory predictions from classmates that she would only get into med school because she was Black or not get into med school at all because she was Black, Owusu-Ansah got accepted to the University of Chicago.

She says she got the phone call and was in disbelief. “Nothing was electronic back then,” she says. “I was waiting for the letter!”

From there, Owusu-Ansah went to Children’s National in Washington, D.C., for a residency in pediatrics. During the summer, she got a degree in public health from Johns Hopkins. After residency, Owusu-Ansah was a pediatrician in an emergency department. She loved it so much, she did a fellowship with Johns Hopkins for pediatric emergency medicine.

Owusu-Ansah’s husband, meanwhile, was a paramedic firefighter. Intrigued by the work he did, Owusu-Ansah did a fellowship in EMS care. She found that her area of expertise, pediatric emergency medicine, was lacking in the EMS field.

“The majority of EMS clinicians are adult-focused,” says Owusu-Ansah.

Called to do more

“I’m a person of faith,” says Owusu-Ansah. “And in November of 2022, I had an epiphany that I needed to do more cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) education. And I’m the queen of cold calls, so I decided I was just going to email the NFL medical director.” Owusu-Ansah said the NFL needed bystander training in CPR and that she could help.

A few months later, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during a Monday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals. This incident brought home the need for bystander CPR training and put the issue in the national spotlight.

Owusu-Ansah got to work and organized the training of 105 football players on CPR in one day. She brought her program to the colleges and trained 500 division one athletes on another day.

Owusu-Ansah says this wouldn’t have been possible without community support.

“The reason I’m so passionate about this is the research,” she says. “Communities of color are less likely to receive CPR. Women are less likely to receive CPR. We’ve known about these disparities, but we haven’t done much to move the needle to change it.”

CPR works by restarting the heart and lungs to oxygenate the brain and get it going again. The heart stops for various reasons, says Owusu-Ansah. Every cell works off of electricity. She compares the heart stopping to when the lights flicker at home. They can either come back on or stay off if the power doesn’t get back up and running.

“It’s really important that everyone learns how to do CPR,” says Owusu-Ansah. Statistics say that 80 percent of cardiac arrests happen at home, so you’re likely going to be doing it on someone you know and love.

Owusu-Ansah says that time is the key to surviving a cardiac arrest. Three minutes after brain death is really all a person has. If you wait for EMS to get there, the person probably won’t survive. “The sooner someone starts CPR, the higher the likelihood of survival. It’s not the doctors or the trauma surgeons who are going to save them, it’s everyday people,” says Owusu-Ansah.

Empowering everyday people

Owusu-Ansah says community support means everything to initiatives like bystander CPR.

“The key is to be integrated in the community. Particularly in underserved communities of color, immigrant communities. Build trust so that you can get people’s buy-in,” she says.

Owusu-Ansah cofounded Akoma United with this express purpose. The organization’s mission is to empower people to help save all lives, especially those in communities of color. They provide CPR training as well as stop the bleed training and other ways bystanders can help in an emergency situation.

“The vision is that if anyone dropped down from cardiac arrest, there’d be someone there to perform CPR,” says Owusu-Ansah. “We all have the potential to do good. People innately want to do good. They want to help others. They just need to be guided.”

One obstacle to overcome is people’s fear of making a situation worse, but Owusu-Ansah reminds communities that there is no liability on the person helping, and doing something is better than nothing. “Every life is worth saving,” she says.