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Edgewood Middle School became designated as a Heart Safe School through Project ADAM Friday as part of an effort to make all schools in Warsaw Community School Corporation Heart Safe Schools.
Project ADAM affiliate programs assist schools and community partners in building cardiac emergency response plans that can be activated when every second matters. Program leaders provide the foundation schools need to strengthen their readiness — offering templates, resources and one‑on‑one consultation to support effective cardiac emergency preparedness and help prevent sudden cardiac death in the school setting, according to the Project ADAM website.
Tonya Aerts, Northern Indiana program coordinator with Project ADAM, said she was a teacher at New Prairie High School, Wills Township, and in 2017, a student died in the school hallway during an intermural basketball game “and we did not know how to respond to that.” Aerts said she was shook by that. She has a background in cardiac rehab and thought there had to something they could do.
Aerts said she then discovered Project ADAM and started talking about how to get it started in Indiana. An affiliate hospital was needed, so Aerts connected with Riley Children’s Hospital.
In May 2021, New Prairie became the first Heart Safe School in Indiana and that is when the program started in Indiana, she said. Before Friday, there were about 77 schools in Indiana that were Heart Safe Schools in Indiana. The goal is to have 100 by the end of the current school year.
In the process of getting designated, Kennedy Wagner, nurse coordinator with WCS, said Edgewood had already had a test drill, but Friday was the drill to get certified.
WCS started working with Lutheran EMS in January 2025 to see how the designation would work in the schools and how the school corporation could go about it without creating more work for their school nurses.
“But this is something we really want to do because we want to have safe schools, and we feel like it’s really important,” she said.
During the process of getting the designation, each school had to put together some emergency action plans, she said.
“So we had some different procedures that we put in place in each of the buildings and the nurses were really vital in telling us how their building works. So everyone’s plan looks just a little bit different,” she said.
With the help of Lutheran EMS, an outline of procedures was developed for the entire district the nurses could work from.
The school district was able to do drills at every school last year for practice. They were able to look at how many AEDs were in the school and signage associated with the AEDs. They critiqued procedures and how they were able to handle a cardiac arrest situation along the way.
To be a Heart Safe School, “there’s certain criteria that we have to meet with each of our drills,” Wagner said, noting schools would have to have two drills a year.
Another requirement of the school with the designation is to have enough AEDS. The goal is when someone goes into cardiac arrest, the school is able to the person help within three minutes.
“So we really took a look last year at our buildings and really worked on some AED placement and signage to make it easier to find them,” she said. “And we added some more AEDs so that they were more accessible. Another part of it is having a team that responds as well,” which is what they were practicing in their drill Friday.
Wagner said an AED team needed to be made up of 5% to 10% of school staff.
During Friday’s drill, Brenna Blazek, Edgewood school nurse, said a “victim” was going be found in the school library.
“We’re going to activate the AED team and respond just like we would in the event of an actual cardiac emergency. So it’s just to demonstrate that we’re ready for a cardiac emergency,” she said.
The designation ensures the school has an adequate supply of AEDs in the school, they have a team that’s trained and ready to respond to a cardiac emergency and they plans for after-school activities, as well, Blazek said. Wagner said the designation also helps to increase student safety and parents’ feeling confident the school is doing everything they can to take care of their students while they’re at school.
Aerts said the designation is good for two years.
A qualifying drill was also held at Leesburg Elementary School Friday. There are plans on getting the high school, Claypool Elementary School and Lakeview Middle School designated this year.
