CPR less likely for minorities on street or home

Your Health Matters

In this Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012 photo, Mary Tappe holds up the defibrillator that she keeps in the trunk of her automobile during a work break at the Western Union headquarters in Englewood, Colo. Tappe owes her life to bystanders' willingness to offer help. In 2004, she collapsed at her office in Iowa. A co-worker called 911; another quickly began CPR and someone else used the office's automated heart defibrillator. An ambulance took Tappe to the hospital, where doctors said her heart had stopped. They never determined why but implanted an internal defibrillator. Tappe, 51, who now lives in Englewood, Colo., said raising awareness about the importance of CPR is "incredibly important because that's the first step" to helping people survive. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)People who collapse from cardiac arrest in poor black neighborhoods are half as likely to get CPR from family members at home or bystanders on the street as those in better-off white neighborhoods, according to a study that found the reasons go beyond race.

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