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Heart to Beat initiative takes proactive approach to sports safety

Scott Kuhlman is a 2010 Loyola Blakefield graduate and the CEO of Heart To Beat, an Owings Mills-based safety training and consulting firm that helps organizations prepare and protect their student-athletes.

Loyola Blakefield has put in place an initiative to train 100 percent of the faculty in CPR and use of the AED unit after a near-fatal incident in 2021. (Kevin J. Parks/CR Staff)

Kuhlman also volunteered at the Jacksonville Volunteer Fire Company in Baltimore County where he began to see a need for more extensive training for heart-related issues.

“I found a real disconnect between the moment an emergency occurs and when help arrives – 11 minutes,” said Kuhlman, who also graduated from Loyola University Maryland. “Everybody says ‘It takes so long,’ but we’re flying there to get to you, blowing through red lights. I realized that society didn’t know how to respond to an emergency and that motivated me to start the company.”

Heart To Beat now has 24 employees, operates in 19 states, and provides all types of safety training, from CPR to Active Assailant situations. It also offers AED management services.

Loyola Blakefield is one of several schools that is a client of Heart To Beat and a near-death incident with lacrosse player Peter Laake helped raise awareness to have proper training available.

“In our world, we have two types of clients – proactive and reactive,” Kuhlman said. “Reactive clients are calling us after an incident. We also have a lot of proactive clients who say, ‘We’re going to do the right thing or we know we have an obligation here.’ ”

Kuhlman and his company also did the CPR training for employees of the Catholic Center in Baltimore a few years ago.

To read more about AED devices and how one helped save the life of Loyola Blakefield lacrosse player Peter Laake, visit: https://catholicreview.org/life-and-death-aeds-save-lives-on-sports-fields/

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