Black children less likely than other youths to receive CPR outside hospitals

Black children in the poorest neighborhoods are less likely than white children to be given CPR by bystanders outside a hospital setting, a new study finds. In general, black children were 41% less likely to be given CPR if they had a heart attack than children of other races. Hispanic kids were 22% less likely to be helped, and children of other ethnicities were about 6% less likely to be given CPR. Researchers also ranked neighborhoods based on the racial makeup of the population, unemployment levels, and other factors and found that black children in the worst-scoring neighborhoods were almost half as likely to receive CPR than white children. One way to reduce these disparities could be to better educate those in the poorest neighborhoods on how to perform CPR, the authors write.