South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) has won a Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) award for its campaign to increase public awareness of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillators.

Entitled Saving lives - the three Cs (cardiac arrest, CPR, communication), it was named the best healthcare campaign on Tuesday, October 18 at the CIPR PRide Awards 2022 in the Anglia, Thames, and Chiltern region.

Alongside raising public awareness and interest in CPR and automated external defibrillators (AED), the campaign set out to improve take-up rates of CPR and AED usage and raise funds for South Central Ambulance Charity to aid the development of volunteers and the purchasing of equipment.

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It was developed by the communications department in collaboration with the community engagement and training team and South Central Ambulance Charity.

The aim was to ensure regular communication throughout the year to secure national media coverage, significant social media engagement, charity donations, and, most crucially, to aid an increase in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates.

The project covered four main subject areas including SCAS becoming the first in the country to roll out LUCAS 3, a state-of-the-art device that can perform CPR on a patient automatically to free up paramedics to carry out other vital interventions.

The second focused on Danish footballer Christian Eriksen's cardiac arrest at Euro 2020, and the link with the 'Save a Life' CPR app developed by SCAS, with the third on Facebook Live CPR sessions hosted as part of the 2021 World Restart a Heart Week.

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The final communications initiative was the story of volunteer Graham Langley who saved the life of his friend and then became a volunteer community first responder.

Among the returns were widespread national and international media coverage of the LUCAS 3 device, national media coverage and a spike in downloads of the 'Save a Life' app, live CPR events which involved more than 50,000 people and regional media coverage of Graham's story and subsequent use as an advert to recruit volunteers.

Nicola Dunbar, head of community engagement and training at SCAS, said: “The dedication and the commitment from our communications department, charity and community training and engagement team in working together to raise the profile of CPR and defibrillators, funding advances in equipment and care and training members of the public has been vital in helping to improve out of hospital cardiac arrest survival rates in the SCAS region.

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"The variety of activities over the course of this year have demonstrated the benefits of this relationship, achieving media and social media impact, raising funds and training thousands of members of the public in vital life-saving skills."