Population Health Research Brief Series

Each year, tens of thousands of Americans go into cardiac arrest after an opioid overdose, often in front of a family member, friend, or stranger.

In the minutes before an ambulance arrives, a bystander’s willingness to start CPR can mean the difference between life, lasting brain injury, and death. Yet that help isn’t reaching everyone equally. This brief describes racial and ethnic gaps in bystander CPR for opioid-related cardiac arrests.

The authors find that Black patients were 30 percent less likely, and Hispanic patients 19 percent less likely, than White patients to receive bystander CPR. Rates rose across all groups when 911 dispatchers walked callers through CPR instructions, though that benefit was strongest for White patients.