Years after Richard Kerber's death, his life-saving legacy expands | Opinion

Years after Richard Kerber's death, his life-saving legacy expands | Opinion
Untold numbers of cardiac arrest victims, nationally and globally, are living today because of Kerber’s pioneering research and heart association leadership.

The late Dr. Richard E. Kerber of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine was a pioneer in what is now known as resuscitation science.

As a founding chair of the American Heart Association’s Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee in the 1970s, he led the development of the association's cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) guidelines, long the gold standard for training in the U.S. and internationally.

Kerber developed, taught and promoted standards of care for all “Code Blue” events, all of which he audited, at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for nearly four decades. He directed the placement of a defibrillator on every ward and in every clinic at the hospital long before that became standard. Kerber also championed and led the extension of CPR training, initially designed for use by health care personnel, to lay people — the bystanders who perform CPR for a sudden cardiac arrest victim in a community setting.

As important as the immediate use of CPR is in restoring life in the event of a sudden cardiac arrest — every minute without CPR results in a 10% decrease in survival — use of an automated external defibrillator (AED) as soon as possible is also critical for survival. Based on his, and others’ research, Kerber promoted and consulted with AED manufacturers to develop, test and implement the use of AEDs in the community setting, to save lives from sudden cardiac arrest. He chaired the American Heart Association committee that developed the standards for AED use in public settings. Promotion of CPR and use of an AED have become the backbone of resuscitation science, now recognized subspecialties of cardiology, critical care and emergency medicine.

At the same time, as Kerber’s sudden cardiac arrest research and leadership was recognized internationally, he was also a two-decade director of the Cardiovascular Training Program that trained scores of cardiologists who benefited from his mentorship and have themselves passed on his lessons to their own trainees. We regard Kerber as “the cardiologist’s cardiologist.” He is important to both of us who wrote this piece: He served as mentor for Dr. Dianne Atkins and cardiologist for Dr. James Merchant.

With the untimely death of Kerber in 2016, things changed. Linda Kerber, Brodbeck Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at UI and internationally acclaimed author of women’s history texts, recognized that in areas of the UI campus outside the hospital complex, CPR training was not available and most buildings were not equipped with an AED.

Together with Atkins, in order to honor and extend Kerber’s passion for saving lives from sudden cardiac arrest, they implemented the UI Richard E. Kerber CPR Initiative in 2017. The goal of the initiative was to provide CPR training for non-health care personnel, to place an AED in all university buildings and to promote CPR training of faculty and staff. This initiative has been highly successful in placement of over 100 AEDs in UI buildings. Training was accomplished in some departments of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, but was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Rotary grant has helped to extend the UI Richard E. Kerber initiative to all of Johnson County. With an initial $10,000 grant, the Rotary-Kerber HeartSafe Community Campaign (iowaheartsafe.org), partnering with the Johnson County Ambulance Service and staffed by Rotary and other volunteers, was launched in 2019. With a goal of making Johnson County one of the safest places anywhere to suffer a sudden cardiac arrest, hundreds of community residents have been trained in CPR and over 100 new AEDs have been placed throughout Johnson County. Donations support the work.

Partnering with the Johnson County Board of Supervisors and the Ambulance Service, the campaign introduced PulsePoint, a nonprofit telephone-app messaging program, in Johnson County. Now with 4,700 CPR-trained enrolled volunteers, the app alerts any volunteer within 2,000 feet of a sudden cardiac arrest prompting bystander response to provide immediate CPR. PulsePoint also directs alerted volunteers to the nearest community-based AED, now numbering nearly 500 throughout Johnson County.

As the campaign concludes its fifth year, we recognize the enormous legacy of Richard and Linda Kerber in developing, advancing, promoting, and implementing community CPR and use of an AED to save lives from sudden cardiac arrest. The use of bystander CPR in Johnson County is nearly 70%, twice of that nationally, and survival with intact neurological function is now 50% higher than the national average. And, untold numbers of arrest victims, nationally and globally, are living today because of Kerber’s pioneering research and heart association leadership.

These saved lives are the legacy of Richard and Linda Kerber.