Inside our WTMJ Cares effort with the American Heart Association

Click here to donate to the American Heart Association.

WTMJ Cares’ next initiative is to highlight the good work of, and help raise money for, the American Heart Association. It’s powered by Watry Industries and Premier Aluminum.

Wisconsin’s Morning News host Gene Mueller will be higlighting stories of the people the American Heart Association has helped in recent years, sharing the efforts the American Heart Association makes reality every day.

We’ll culminate WTMJ Cares with a radiothon on “Wear Red Day,” Friday, February 7 from 9-11 a.m.

What will your donation mean? The American Heart Association shares this:

• $25 helps distribute nutrition and physical activity education kits to 10 elementary schools participating in the Kids Heart Challenge program. You will be helping students of all ages, learn how to stay healthy and make a difference in the lives of others.
• $30 provides 1 pediatrician, nurse or emergency healthcare provider with the specialized training needed to recognize and treat cardiovascular diseases in infants and children.
• $50 provides 10 hospital discharge toolkits to stroke survivors and their families, to help them better understand treatment and care, post-stroke, as well as help connect them with the AHA Support Network, where they can meet other survivors and caretakers.
• $50 helps the American Heart Association to train 1 healthcare provider in proper blood pressure techniques.
• $100 can equip 1 hospital or health department with American Stroke Association resources, to educate patients, the public and health professionals, about stroke.
• $125 provides Go Red for Women education kits to help underserved women, understand and learn ways to reduce their risk for heart disease.
• $300 helps 20+ community members learn hands-only CPR skills, using one of the AHA’s CPR Anytime training kits. The training is done using a DVD tutorial, so anyone can learn, anytime, anywhere.
• $625 will buy a CPR in Schools kit that can train hundreds of students in CPR, AED and choking relief and empowers our youth to feel confident and comfortable with using these skills in a medical emergency.
• The American Heart Association led the charge in advocating for Telephone CPR in our state capitol. In 2018, Governor Walker signed a bill, making it mandatory for all 911 dispatchers in Wisconsin to be trained and able to talk a caller through hands-only CPR in a medical emergency. If you donate, you can help the AHA advocate for other lifesaving bills like this.
• The American Heart Association releases up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines for medical professionals, regarding stroke, heart failure and resuscitation, ultimately improving patient outcomes.
• After Kelsey Gumm, one of our featured survivors, learned that she had been diagnosed with ventricular noncompaction, doctors implanted a pacemaker to help control her abnormal heart rhythms. The first pacemaker was invented by an American Heart Association-funded researcher in 1957

Stacy Amstadt, Communications Director at the American Heart Association, joined Wisconsin’s Morning News to launch our latest initiative. Click in the player below to listen.