Volunteers Learn Early Warning Signs of Stroke

By David Robinson

 (l-r) UAMS’ Julie Hall-Barrow and Salah Keyrouz joined Marian Emr of the NIH to lead the Stroke Champions Conference.

Participants from around the state at hospitals such as Baxter Regional Medical Center in Mountain Home (on projector screen) were part of the Stroke Champions Conference.

Nov. 4, 2010| Arkansas’ fight against stroke just got a big dose of energy.

More than 250 enthusiastic volunteers from across the state came together Oct. 27 to become “Stroke Champions,” people who will take life-saving information about stroke into their communities.

Sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Stroke Champions Conference was based at UAMS, whose Center for Distance Health used its telemedicine (high-speed broadband video communications) technology to link conference participants in 22 communities.

Arkansas leads the nation in stroke mortality, but UAMS’ stroke education and treatment leaders are hopeful that the conference will mark a beginning of the end of such notoriety.

“This was a exciting day for Arkansas because the most effective stroke awareness is face to face, and now we have the community volunteers to help us make that happen,” said Julie Hall-Barrow, Ed.D., education director at the Center for Distance Health and program director for Arkansas SAVES.

The conference gave the diverse group of participants an opportunity to develop strategies for making the public aware of how to identify stroke symptoms and to recognize it as a medical emergency. Participants represented education, health, business, insurance and religious groups.

The conference trained the largest number of stroke champions in one session since the inception of the NIH/CDC Know Stroke in the Community program, said Marian Emr, director of Communications for the NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). In fact, the total number of participants was higher than in all 13 previous Stroke Champions conferences combined.

“Because Arkansas leads the nation in stroke mortality, recruiting stroke champions who are committed to educating their communities is an essential step toward improving public health across the state,” Emr said.

After hearing from Emr, UAMS College of Medicine Dean Debra H. Fiser, M.D., and Salah Keyrouz, M.D., a neurologist who leads UAMS’ stroke program, the 22 sites spent about an hour brainstorming ideas for getting the stroke message out into their communities.

The quality, variety and number of ideas impressed conference leaders.

“If even half of these proposals are implemented, we’re going to have a revolution in stroke awareness in Arkansas,” Keyrouz said.

“NIH representatives said that they had never heard so many ideas that fell outside the traditional public education path,” Hall-Barrow said. “Our stroke champions really grasp that treatment and outcomes are largely dependent on how quickly the patient gets to a facility that can treat their stroke.”

At the end of the half-day conference, participants were challenged to make four presentations each within their communities. Each stroke champion received an education kit with materials to give out and contact information at the NIH to receive other stroke education resources. Staff at the UAMS Center for Distance Health also is following up with conference participants to offer assistance.

“As we work with the stroke champions in the coming months, we look forward to hearing how the Know Stroke program is reaching people throughout Arkansas,” Emr said.