Groups to hold free EKG screenings students

JACKSON, Tenn. — Two groups are coming together to ensure heart health for local students here in Madison County.

Friends of Heart is partnering with a nonprofit from Florida called Who We Play For to provide free EKG screenings to youth across the area.

“We’re piloting our youth EKG screening initiative at North Side High School on Tuesday, February 28. All day we’ll be here set up and providing EKGs to student athletes, band members, and members of ROTC,” said Caitlin Roach-Clark, the Executive Director of Friends of Heart.

North Side High School will be the first school Friends of Heart is providing screenings to.

They will be looking for underlying health conditions that might have been missed from the legal state physicals athletes need in order to compete.

“We’re wanting to check out the heart in greater detail and make sure there isn’t something there that could cause sudden cardiac arrest. That is the number one killer of student athletes, and it’s just something we’d rather be proactive about,” Roach-Clark said.

The screening will be from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

While North Side High will be the first, officials say these EKG screenings will be taking place at public, private, and home schools across the county.

“It’s really important to us to do it during the school day because we want to capture as many students as possible before they’re at practice, before they’re gone for the day. We don’t want to do it on a Saturday. We just want to pull them out for a few minutes and then they go back to classes,” Roach-Clark said.

These screenings are free. All parents need to do is fill out a waiver form.

There will also be students from the Jackson State Community College EKG program in attendance to administer the tests.

“Whatever they experience when they’re playing sports, that’s what they believe is their normal. So they might have an increased heart rate, they might have that adrenaline rush feeling in a way that’s not normal and they don’t know that. So they don’t know to tell you something is wrong because to them it’s just how they’re body reacts so we’ve got to look for that,” Roach-Clark said.

If a student goes into cardiac arrest, one of the only things that could save their life is an AED. But these EKG screenings will detect underlying conditions before it’s too late.

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