By Steven Katona
Smiling faces, with pumping hearts, and clad in crimson and white, hundreds walked under a unifying beat to spread awareness in the Volusia/Flagler County.
Sept. 27, the American Heart Association came back to Daytona Beach eager to see residents in the community participate in its annual “Heart Walk.” Last year the event was cancelled, due to inclement weather, so this year fingers were crossed, hoping for sunny skies.
The AHA Heart Walk is an event held nationwide and aims to influence people to make positive lifestyle changes by educating them about heart disease. Locally, more than $200,000 was raised at the walk by participants. Daytona State College was fifth in contributions and Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center came in at number one.
“We raise funds for research and education,” said Luanna Lumpkins, Metro Vice President of the AHA. “Heart disease is the number one killer of men, women and children, so we have funded 1.5 million dollars in Central Florida and almost 12 million dollars in Florida alone for research and education.”
Evidence of this research, Lumpkin points out, can be seen in contemporary pacemaker technology, “When they first came out with pacemakers they used to be the size of a baseball, and now they’re smaller than an Ipod Nano,” she said.
“The AHA has also had advocacy efforts such as making sure that children have healthier lunches in school, and smoke-free restaurants. More recently we’ve developed hands-free CPR because we’ve found that many people were not taking action because they didn’t like to do mouth to mouth. So now, what you do is just the compressions, and think of the beat to the song ‘Staying Alive’ while you’re doing it.”
The entire Daytona State College athletics program, as well as hundreds of other individuals and groups were in attendance to help pump up cardiovascular awareness, many having personal experience with heart disease. The event’s three-mile walk started beneath the International Speedway Boulevard bridge at Daytona’s City Island Park, went down South on Beach Street, around Jackie Robinson Ballpark and across City Island Parkway., near the Volusia County Courthouse.
The AHA Heart Walk gives the opportunity for friends and family of heart disease survivors to come together and stand tall. Volusia County resident Bill Tol came with his wife Carol to donate to the AHA in honor of their granddaughter Emma.
“She was born with a congenital heart issue, something called Tetralogy of Fallot. They had to repair it when she was a baby. She’s 10 now and doing great,” said Bill Tol. “This event is a good reminder of the fact that there are many survivors, and there are a lot of people that have benefited from the research that has been done.”
Lumpkin said,, “Both of my parent died from heart disease. My mother died of a massive stroke. . . and my dad went into open heart surgery and never came out. It’s personal to me, and I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through with my parents.”
Added event specialist Allison Crouch, “The research is astounding. There are over 80 projects that are being funded in Florida just from the funds that we bring in here. I think this event is fully centeredaround the fact that doing something simple like walking once a day can have a crazy impact on people’s lifestyle. We get so many stories from people that if they didn’t know the signs ─ because of attending a Heart Association event ─ they might have died because they wouldn’t have known they were having a heart attack otherwise.”
The Daytona Beach Heart Walk next year iis projected to be even bigger and there is going to be a T-shirt contest for the most creative, funniest, and the T-shirt with the best message that encorporate the AHA logo. CEO of Florida Hospital Fish, Ed Noseworthy, is the incoming event chair, along with Daryl Tol, Regional Director of Florida Hospital Volusia/Flagler.
For information about the AHA and the heart walk event visit its website at http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/.