GEMA Grand Rounds: Community-Based CPR Education in Ghana
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest remains a major challenge in Ghana and other low- and middle-income countries, where limited access to bystander CPR can delay lifesaving intervention before formal emergency care becomes available. "Gye Obi Nkwa!" (translates to "Save a Life") is a Twi-language Hands-Only CPR education initiative developed to address this gap through community-based education designed around the language, context, and realities of the population it serves. Developed under the mentorship of Dr. Naz Karim and the Brown University Global Emergency Medicine Division, the initiative seeks to make lifesaving knowledge accessible, relatable, and actionable. This presentation will share early lessons from the first 186 participants and explore what the experience has revealed about community engagement, health behavior change, culturally and linguistically tailored emergency education, and strengthening community response within emergency care systems in resource-limited settings.
Objectives
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Describe practical lessons from the development and implementation of a community-based CPR education intervention in Ghana.
- Identify principles for designing community-based emergency education interventions in resource-limited settings.