JULIEN COMARDELLE - A SIMPLE, LIFESAVING ENDEAVOR

My name is Julien Comardelle and I’m a student at West Linn High School.

As a volunteer alongside Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue, I have had the opportunity to go to my former middle school, Athey Creek, and teach the seventh grade class the simple but extremely important basics of CPR.

CPR is a very simple and easy-to-learn skill that unfortunately, few people feel the need to learn. Teaching CPR is a very simple endeavor. The students I have had the pleasure of working with have been very attentive during the lessons and focused during the applied exercises.

If students in Oregon are trained in CPR, there is now a greater chance that a person experiencing cardiac arrest will have access to CPR and survive. The current national average for survival for out of hospital cardiac arrest in 2014 was only 10.4% according to the American Heart Association.

CPR education is personally very important to me because my father had Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and he developed cardiac complications after chemotherapy. In summer 2012, he had a cardiac arrest at home. He was successfully resuscitated on the floor of our living room and that prolonged his life by two more years. As soon as my age permitted, I got fully CPR-certified.

In my freshman year of high school, I performed a research project for the Intel Science and Engineering Fair which compared CPR certification rates between Oregon and Louisiana. It was at the fair that I was approached by Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue and introduced to the project, which I am so honored to be a part of.

Anyone can save a life and everyone should know how.

Julien testified on Senate Bill 79 in May 2015. Thanks to advocates like Julien, soon after, the bill passed the Oregon Legislature, requiring all students learn CPR before graduating.

https://www.yourethecure.org/