NSW Sports Minister and Rockdale MP Steve Kamper has announced a $50,000 grant to the Heartbeat of Football Foundation to deliver Heart Health Awareness and Screening Days across NSW.
Mr Kamper announced the grant during a visit to Claydon Reserve, Sans Souci recently.
The funding will deliver free heart health checks to sporting communities to tackle cardiovascular disease cardiac arrest.
The progam will focus on those local government areas (LGAs) identified as high-risk heart hotspots (80 per cent regional and 20 per cent metro): Hunter/Central Coast; Illawarra/South-East; New England/North West; Central West/Orana; and Riverina plus South-West/Western Sydney.
The program's education, awareness, training, and preventative screening provides people the knowledge, reassurance and confidence to continue to enjoy the many benefits of participating regularly in sport, irrespective of age, ability, gender or background.
"The benefits of sport are the cornerstone for communities across regional NSW and our support of this initiative is not only an investment in the health and wellbeing of residents but also in the prosperity and vitality of the region as a whole," Mr Kamper said.
"Personally, I was at the 2016 launch of the Heartbeat of Football Foundation and have cheered from the sidelines as have they continued to grow their reach and impact at community sporting grounds across NSW and major events such as FIFA Women's World Cup Fan Festival site in Sydney/Gadigal."
The Foundation has now delivered over 10,000 nurse-led preventative heart health screening tests across Australia as well as provided over 1,100 people with CPR and AED confidence sessions, growing the bystander network willing and able to respond to an emergency cardiac situation.
"I'm delighted the NSW Office of Sport is supporting our mission with our first ever Government grant in NSW," HOF Founder Andrew Paschalidis said.
"We will be utilising 80 per cent of the funding to deliver free heart health checks in regional NSW knowing the current access and inequity issues that exist. Community sport provides great opportunities to also get the important message out far and wide with regards to #KnowYourNumbers and #PreventionistheBestDefence and ensuring all of us try to get a regular check up," MR Paschalidis said.
The "Heart Health Matters - Community Sport" project will be delivering heart health checks to as many people as possible for key modifiable risk factors - Blood Pressure, Blood Sugar and Cholesterol at their local sports ground.
In addition, it will be holding CPR and AED confidence sessions to build a stronger and more diverse network of bystander confidence as every minute counts when a person is in cardiac arrest as the chance of survival decreases by 10 percent every minute.
The project supports other NSW Government initiatives, including the Local Sport Defibrillator program, championing the opportunity to make NSW the safest State to play sport.
