Over 60 high school students receive CPR certification through U of T programs

When medical students Sammah Yahya and Trina Julien applied to be program coordinators for the University of Toronto Summer Mentorship Program in March, one of their goals was to incorporate free CPR certification for high-school students into their work.

“Looking into the research, Black individuals are less likely to get CPR training, as well as receive CPR if they are in a cardiac arrest on the street,” says Yahya, a third-year student at U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine. “And that was a barrier we really felt we could help close through provision of CPR classes.”

Cardiac arrest is when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation (Heart & Stroke), an estimated 60,000 cardiac arrests occur outside of a hospital every year in Canada.

Yahya and Julien, as senior directors of the health promotion team with U of T’s Black Medical Students Association’s (BMSA), had already facilitated an introductory CPR workshop for high school students through Temerty Medicine’s MedLinx program earlier this year.

“One piece of feedback we got from that session was that students really loved it and they wanted to get certification,” says Yahya. “They asked if there was a part two. So that became our goal, and we also wanted to become instructors.”

The pair quickly realized that outreach programs run by Temerty Medicine’s Office of Access and Outreach (OAO) — the Summer Mentorship Program (SMP) and STEAM Design, offered great opportunities to bring CPR into the summer student experience.

Ike Okafor, strategic lead in the OAO, connected Yahya with Saswata Deb, an emergency physician and clinician-scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Sunnybrook Research Institute.

“Coincidentally,” recalls Okafor, “Dr. Lisa Richardson, had connected us with Dr. Deb, who we had worked with earlier in the year on an activity at Sunnybrook Hospital. And he had the same passion and interest.”

Richardson is the vice dean of strategy and governance at Temerty Medicine, and an internist at Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network.

One person experiences a cardiac arrest every nine minutes in Canada, notes Deb, who is also an assistant professor in Temerty Medicine’s division of emergency medicine, department of family and community medicine, and health promotion education lead for OAO.

“CPR from friends, family, and strangers — known as bystander CPR — can save lives. But certain neighbourhoods lack bystander CPR due to sociodemographic factors,” Deb says.

Together, the students and Deb were able to secure collaborations with the Heart and Stroke Foundation,  Surviving Link and Sunnybrook's President's Anti-Racism Taskforce (PART) to make the MD students’ goal a reality.

“We followed a trainees-teaching-trainees model — beginning with certification of four BMSA students as Heartsaver® instructors,” explains Deb. “They then led the sessions for 66 high school students from various communities.”

The students who received Heart & Stroke’s Heartsaver® certification were part of the 2025 cohorts of the SMP and STEAM Design, and they jumped at the opportunity to get the training.

“I was interested in learning CPR, and learning the skills to save my family members if need be,” says Aaliyah, an SMP participant.

The high school students’ training followed a blended approach. First, they completed Heart & Stroke’s online modules. Then they received four hours of hands-on training from the four BMSA instructors ­— Yahya, Julien, and second-year MD students Hephzibah Ali and Nifemi Adeoye.

“By the time they got to us,” says Julien, “they already knew the basics and the foundations of CPR because they did the modules and passed the exam.”

The impact of the CPR training initiative is far reaching.

“First, it provides training for the high school students,” says Okafor. “It provides them with practical skills they can apply in real situations. Second, it builds upon CanMEDS competencies such as  advocacy, leadership communication as well as their experience and exposure to a variety of different health professions, which they receive in our summer programs. For the communities in which they live, they're now trained as first responders so they can respond to individuals who are experiencing cardiac arrest.

“Ultimately, this CRP training will save lives,” Okafor says.

The SMP gives high school students in grades 10 and 11 who self-identify as Indigenous Black, multi-racial a chance to explore health sciences at the University of Toronto.

STEAM Design is an experiential learning program for students in grades 10 and 11 who identify with groups that are underrepresented in health sciences (i.e., Black, Indigenous, Filipino, Latin American, racialized, and/or from any background experiencing socio-economic barriers). 

Both programs run for four weeks in July. The OAO aims to integrate CPR certification into both programs on an ongoing basis.