Practice CPR. Help others learn CPR. Encourage your family, your friends and your colleagues to learn CPR. Since you took that course years ago, its been simplified and just a few minutes practicing with a coach inspires confidence.

Learn to use an AED and look for them wherever you go. Airports, gyms, and other public places have them. Be ready to use one.

Download PulsePoint on your phone so you can respond to help.

Insist on accurate performance measures from your EMS system.

It all begins with data. True response times — the time it takes to reach the side of a sudden cardiac arrest victim — and true survival data are essential to prevent needless deaths.

Make sure your EMS system is tracking these key indicators.

If they are, encourage the medical director for your EMS agency or fire department to share their data.

Engage your community leaders and politicians and ask them for this data; they have the ultimate power to save these lives.

Carrots and sticks. It’s important to celebrate the success stories with inspirational news stories of those who were saved; and it’s essential that we pay as much attention to those who died needlessly.

Amid the tragic loss, few people ask what could be done better. The communities that save the most lives never stop asking what they can do better.

Share your questions, ideas and stories with us so that we can help connect those who have the will to act with compassion in an emergency. We know people who know people. We welcome you to join others with the paramedic mindset who can’t rest until nobody dies in front of others from a lack of CPR and a shock from an AED.

When life and death is defined within six minutes, it’s up to us to act.