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Photo: CareSource
Photo: Who We Play For
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Economic Backbone: Cardiac Care
Detecting Trouble
Black athletes are three times more likely to die from sudden cardiac arrest than white athletes. Two non-profits have teamed up with Florida's historically Black colleges and universities to screen student athletes.
The sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) incidents with Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin and college basketball player Bronny James brought national attention to the often-fatal heart problem. Without quick CPR or automatic external defibrillator use to get the heart beating again, 90% of people who go into SCA outside of a hospital will die.
About 2,000 young people die from sudden cardiac arrest each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. It’s the leading cause of death in sports.
Black athletes are three times as likely to die from SCA compared with white athletes, although researchers are not entirely sure why. It could be linked to undiagnosed cases of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which leaves the heart muscle bigger and thicker than it normally is. Another possible cause is undiagnosed concentric left ventricular hypertrophy, which causes the left side of the heart to be thicker and occurs at higher rates among Black college football players, according to research from Jonathan H. Kim, director of sports cardiology and an associate professor of medicine at Emory University in Atlanta. These heart problems will not usually be found during a routine sports physical.
Finding and treating heart conditions in advance can cut down on the future risk of SCA.
Social determinants of health such as access to care may also play a role, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
The Melbourne-based non-profit Who We Play For, which focuses on reducing SCA events among athletes, partnered this past fall with the non-profit managed care organization CareSource to offer electrocardiogram heart screenings to all athletes and band members at Florida’s four historically Black colleges and universities: Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens, Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach and Edward Waters University in Jacksonville.
Athletic programs usually do not perform electrocardiograms when evaluating student athletes, says Evan Ernst, CEO of Who We Play For.
“Every single time we go to a campus, we hear students talk about a friend, teammate, or brother who died of sudden cardiac arrest,” Ernst says.
“When people think of heart conditions, they often think of older people. This shows it can happen to anyone. There’s no age, race or economic limit to it,” says Angie Carey, associate vice president of partnerships and community engagement at CareSource, which is based in Dayton, Ohio, but has an office in Jacksonville.
In the majority of cases, the heart problems found during electrocardiogram screening events can be treated, and the student-athlete can return to sports if given the green light by their physician, Ernst says.
The program held a total of seven screenings at the four HBCUs in 2023, with 403 students screened. Those screenings identified nine students who were advised to follow up with a doctor due to potential heart issues.
CareSource leaders wanted to support the screening program as they often address health inequity, and they have frequently supported HBCUs on a national level, Carey says. At the screening events, she was expecting empty lines but was thrilled to see entire athletic teams waiting for their heart screenings.
Both Who We Play For and CareSource would like to keep the program going at Florida’s HBCUs. CareSource may look to expand the idea into Georgia or even nationally, Carey says.
