MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee County has brought to life a potentially life-saving dashboard.
"It’s the first of its kind in the nation. This public-facing dashboard." Chief Health Policy Adviser of Milwaukee County," Dr. Ben Weston explains.
Dr. Ben Weston helped unveil the Office of Emergency Management's latest tool at Fiserv Forum Tuesday afternoon.
"Everything we do is data-informed. And we try to be transparent in that data. It's not an internal dashboard, it's a public-facing dashboard, anyone can go online and look at it," Dr. Weston says.
Dr. Weston says this Cardiac Arrest Dashboard comes at a time when the county is seeing a rise in these types of emergencies.
"Since 2020 and each year moving forward, we have seen a nearly 25 percent increase in sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.”
According to the American Heart Association, more than 350, 000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur each year in the United States.
Data shows there are multiple reasons for the rise.
"I think mental health has a lot to do with it, I think access to care has a lot to do with it. I think substance use has a portion to do with it. I think there's a lot of evidence out there covid infection has a lot to with it. It affects your coronary arteries. The arteries of your heart,” Dr. Weston explains.
County Executive David Crowley says this dashboard also shows the health disparities across the county.
"When you think about cardiac arrests, it has disproportionally affected black and brown individuals in Milwaukee County. But even when you think about certain municipalities right, some municipalities are older than others.”
This data will show where more lifesaving training sessions need to happen as well.
"We can target at the census track level. That's just a few square blocks where we can do this sort of education. We can get into churches, we can get into barber shops, we can get into sporting venues” Dr. Weston explains.
According to the American Heart Association, during cardiac arrest, immediate CPR can double or triple a person’s chance of survival.
However, the county’s dashboard shows a 29.2% overall rate of patients who received CPR from a bystander in the county. County officials would like to see more people performing bystander CPR in emergencies.
Through a partnership with the county and Fiserv Forum and the Bucks. They're hoping they can inspire other businesses to take health and safety as seriously as Fiserv Forum does.
There are multiple automated external defibrillators, otherwise known as AED’S on every floor in the arena.
"They have done a really nice job of organizing that. We just hope that other organizations take that safety mindset approach to designing their building to be a safe space for patrons” County EMS Division Director, Dan Pojar explains.
With more people aware of life-saving measures, there could be a healthier county.
If you want to learn CPR, the American Heart Association has a network of authorized instructors.
It’s about time to watch on your time. Stream local news and weather 24/7 by searching for “TMJ4” on your device.
Available for download on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and more.
