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The Heartbeat of Football Foundation has announced its receipt of a grant of $50,000 from the NSW Government to deliver its community sport focused heart health initiatives across regional sporting grounds through its ‘Heart Health Matters - Community Sport’ initiative.

Aiming to leverage the power of sport to tackle cardiovascular disease and cardiac arrest in NSW sporting communities, the project will deliver heart health awareness and screening days in regional NSW and local government areas identified as high-risk heart hotspots (80% regional and 20% metro): Hunter/Central Coast; Illawarra/South-East; New England/North West; Central West/Orana; and Riverina plus South-West/Western Sydney.

Commenting on the initiative, NSW Sports Minister, Steve Kamper stated “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.”

“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.”

The Foundation has now delivered over 10,000 nurse-led preventative heart health screening tests across Australia as well as provided over 1100 people with CPR & AED confidence sessions - growing the bystander network willing & able to respond to an emergency cardiac situation.

Heartbeat of Football Foundation founder, Andrew Paschalidis added “I’m delighted the NSW Office of Sport is supporting our mission with our first ever Government grant in NSW.

“We will be utilising 80% 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.”

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.

Clubs across all sports are invited to sign up and support this initiative by visiting www.makeitred.org

Click here for more information on the Heartbeat of Football Foundation.

Image credit: Shutterstock.

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