In areas of Denver, Colo, Latinos who suffer cardiac arrest are less likely to call 911 for help partially due to distrust for law enforcement and language barriers, Reuters reported on Monday.
"We always sort of take it for granted the people will call 911, and this is the first study to really take a step back and say, gosh there's real barriers that we need to talk about," said Dr. Comilla Sasson, who led the new study.
Those who are more likely to suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital are people who live in poor and minority neighborhoods. They are also less likely to receive life-saving CPR, according to the study.
Misconceptions, including that first responders aren't going to help a person unless they are documented or are going to place undocumented immigrants under arrest, need to be combated so everyone can receive the care they need without fear.
"It's something we spent a lot of time here in Denver really talking to our police officers and talking to our community members to let them know that if you call 911 we're not going to ask for identification - we're here to help you," Sasson said.
Residents were studied across five low-income, mostly Latino areas of Denver to create a focus group and conduct individual interviews to figure out what might be stopping them from calling for help, learning CPR or administering it.
Some of the six major factors identified included fear of law enforcement if the bystander was undocumented or had an arrest record.
Another issue was language and cultural differences. For example, there was concern over touching a stranger in the mouth or chest area when performing CPR, Yahoo reported.
"I don't know if it's limited to Hispanic culture or not, but the hesitancy to touch another person, especially in the chest, and if it's a woman, oh my goodness . . . Uh, there is great hesitation on the older people's part," said one participant.
There was also a fear of not being able to communicate with an emergency dispatcher, or for it taking much longer to get time-sensitive information across.
"There's both economic and racial disparities in who has access to life-saving therapy like CPR and it's unacceptable that people shouldn't have access to simple life-saving interventions like CPR," said Dr. Ben Bobrow, who wasn't involved in the study.
