American Heart Month: Atlanta Guide
Every February, hospitals put up red banners, organizations hold walks, and public health campaigns remind Americans that heart disease kills more people in this country than any other cause. Those reminders matter when they turn into action: someone checks their blood pressure, talks to a doctor, learns the warning signs, or finally gets trained to respond if a heart emergency happens in front of them.
Medical treatment has improved for decades, but heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, claiming more than 700,000 lives each year, roughly one death every 35 seconds. American Heart Month, designated by Congress in 1963 and observed annually every February, is useful only if it turns awareness into action: prevention before a crisis, and CPR readiness if prevention is not enough.
What American Heart Month Is
American Heart Month was established by a joint resolution of Congress in 1963, at the urging of President Lyndon Johnson, as heart disease was well established as the leading cause of American deaths. The American Heart Association has co-led the public awareness effort since the beginning. The campaign centers on February because heart disease peaks in winter months, cold weather constricts blood vessels and increases cardiovascular strain, and because the timing aligns with Valentine’s Day, making the heart symbolism difficult to miss.
National Wear Red Day falls on the first Friday of February each year and is the campaign’s highest-visibility moment, focused specifically on women’s heart health. Women were historically underrepresented in cardiovascular research and often experience heart attack symptoms differently than men, subtler, less likely to include the classic crushing chest pain. The red campaign is partly a correction of that blind spot, reminding women and their healthcare providers that heart disease is just as much a women’s issue as a men’s one.
Upcoming CPR Class Dates and Times
The American Heart Association’s broader February campaigns push education on risk factors, encourage screenings for blood pressure and cholesterol, and promote lifestyle changes with documented impact on cardiovascular outcomes. These campaigns extend through workplaces, schools, healthcare systems, and community organizations throughout the month.
Why Heart Disease Awareness Matters
Heart disease has remained the leading cause of death in the United States for more than a century, but the numbers obscure something important: much of it is preventable. Roughly half of all Americans live with at least one of the three major cardiovascular risk factors, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking, and many of them do not know it. High blood pressure in particular is called the silent killer because it produces no symptoms until it causes a heart attack or stroke. About one in three American adults has high blood pressure; roughly one in five does not know they have it.
Awareness campaigns change these numbers by prompting people to get screenings they have been putting off, to discuss cardiovascular risk factors with their physicians, and to make changes before the first symptom appears. They also reduce the stigma and fatalism around heart disease, the assumption that it is just what happens when you get older, by demonstrating that lifestyle choices meaningfully shift risk at any age.
The economic argument is almost secondary to the human one, but it is significant: cardiovascular disease costs the U.S. healthcare system hundreds of billions annually in direct medical costs and lost productivity. Prevention is dramatically cheaper than treatment.
Simple Heart-Healthy Actions
The actions with the greatest impact on cardiovascular health are not complicated, but they require consistency. Managing blood pressure, through sodium reduction, regular physical activity, weight management, and medication when prescribed, is the single most effective intervention for reducing heart attack and stroke risk. The American Heart Association recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week, which works out to 30 minutes five days a week. That can mean a brisk walk, a bike ride, or a swim, not necessarily a gym.
Quitting smoking produces rapid cardiovascular benefit. Within a year of quitting, the excess risk of heart disease drops by half. Within fifteen years, a former smoker’s cardiovascular risk approaches that of someone who never smoked. No single lifestyle change produces a faster or larger risk reduction.
Diet changes that reduce cardiovascular risk include reducing sodium and saturated fat, increasing vegetables and whole grains, and replacing processed foods with less-processed alternatives. The Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet both have strong evidence for cardiovascular benefit. Neither requires eliminating entire food groups, both are primarily about proportions and patterns rather than absolute restrictions.
Regular screening matters too. Blood pressure, cholesterol, blood glucose, and body weight are all measurable, and most Americans have access to at least some screening through annual physicals, pharmacy blood pressure kiosks, or community health events. American Heart Month is a useful prompt to schedule screening if it has been more than a year since your last one.
Why CPR Belongs in the Conversation
Every hour, approximately 62 people experience sudden cardiac arrest outside of a hospital in the United States. Survival is almost entirely dependent on how quickly bystanders act, calling 911, starting CPR, and using an AED if one is available. For every minute that passes without CPR, survival odds drop by roughly ten percent. The national average response time for EMS is nine to eleven minutes. Without bystander intervention, most people who arrest outside a hospital do not survive.
American Heart Month naturally raises awareness of the risk of cardiac events, but it is also a direct argument for CPR readiness in every household, workplace, and community. The most effective cardiovascular prevention is lifestyle and risk factor management. But for the moment when prevention has failed and the event is happening in front of you, CPR is the intervention that determines whether a person survives to reach the hospital. These are not competing priorities, they are consecutive ones.
The American Heart Association has consistently advocated for both prevention and bystander response training, recommending that CPR certification reach as much of the general public as possible. Their research shows that communities with higher rates of bystander CPR have meaningfully higher cardiac arrest survival rates. Training translates directly to survival.
How to Participate in American Heart Month
At the individual level, participation means using February as a prompt for action: scheduling a blood pressure check, having a conversation with your physician about your cardiovascular risk profile, or committing to a specific lifestyle change that you have been deferring. If you smoke, February is as good a time as any to set a quit date and tell someone about it, social commitment improves follow-through.
Upcoming CPR Class Dates and Times
Organizations can use American Heart Month to run health screenings, offer workplace wellness programming, or bring in hands-on CPR and First Aid training for staff. The evidence is clear that workplaces with trained personnel respond more effectively to cardiac emergencies, and the training is a practical investment in employee safety. The CPR Card is valid for two years, and First Aid training adds broader emergency-response practice for injuries and sudden illness.
Schools and community organizations can host blood pressure screening events, share educational materials on cardiovascular risk factors, and promote awareness of the nearest AED locations in their facilities. AED awareness is often neglected until it is needed, many people do not know where the nearest AED is, even in buildings they visit daily. American Heart Month is a reasonable time to fix that.