After an elementary school student went into cardiac arrest at school, the Southwest School district teamed up with Cincinnati Children's to become "heart safe."

Southwest School district is now the first district in the Tri-State to earn the certification.

It began when an ordinary day in the classroom at Harrison Elementary took a turn in October of 2022.

“We had a student that had a cardiac event,” said Harrison Jr. High Principal Christian Tracy. “We were incredibly lucky we had experienced nurses and staff members that were able to get and provide care immediately, which was a big part of saving that child's life.”

Tracy says the scary ordeal sparked conversations about how to be more prepared should another emergency occur.

“We realized as a district we must do some things so if that happened anywhere, we were ready to go,” Tracy said.

The Southwest School district partnered with Cincinnati Children's to become "heart-safe" through Project Adam.

“Heart safe is the designation that the Project Adam philosophy goes by,” said Holly Pfriem, a member of Project Adam and a nurse practitioner with Cincinnati Children's. “We go iN and we work with you to make sure that you have the correct number of AEDs and that you have an emergency action plan in place.”

“We started with focusing on Harrison Elementary, where this initial crisis occurred,” Tracy said. “Throughout the district, we had to go through and evaluate the needs and making sure people were trained.”

Staff completed CPR training and additional AED’s were placed at schools.

“The most intense part is you run a full drill where they bring in a mannequin and throw it into a classroom,” Tracy said. “You treat it as a live act with kids and everyone involved. Everyone learns how to react.”

The certification took around a year to complete.

“We will be the first school district as an entire district to earn the Project Adam certification and to see the recognition as a principal makes me incredibly proud,” Tracy said.

Eleven schools within in the area are certified "heart safe." But Tracy hopes others will follow suit.

“When you talk safety, it's got to be a priority,” Tracy said. “Our district has walked the walk of that and I hope other districts follow suit.”