Eric C. Hunter, president and chief executive officer of CareOregon, will chair the Oregon and southwest Washington Heart Walks in 2027. In this role he will lead outreach to businesses, community organizations and local leaders in Portland and Vancouver to expand access to CPR education and training and to raise lifesaving funds for the American Heart Association (AHA).
The appointment positions Hunter as a regional advocate to help build what the AHA describes as a “community of lifesavers” through corporate engagement and community mobilization ahead of next year’s events.
The AHA reports that 9 in 10 people who suffer cardiac arrest outside the hospital die, and more than half of those events do not receive bystander CPR. When performed immediately, CPR can double or triple a person’s chance of survival. These outcomes underscore the AHA’s emphasis on increasing public readiness to act in cardiac emergencies.
Expanding CPR training and public confidence are presented as direct ways to improve out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival and community resilience.
The Heart Walk is the American Heart Association’s largest community-facing initiative. It combines fundraising, community education and corporate engagement to:
Under Hunter’s leadership, local business and community leaders are expected to encourage organizational participation in the Heart Walk campaign and support the shared goal of increasing the number of prepared bystanders.
The AHA cites findings from its 2024 CPR Perceptions Survey showing that 39% of people now feel “extremely confident” or “very confident” they could correctly perform CPR, up from 33% in 2021. The AHA interprets that change as representing roughly 17.7 million more adults with high confidence to act.
Despite this improvement, the survey indicates that 61% of adults still lack high confidence to provide CPR in a cardiac emergency, highlighting ongoing gaps the Heart Walk campaign aims to address.
Abby Khan, M.D., the AHA’s Oregon volunteer board president and OHSU Health Ambulatory Access medical director, commented on the selection, stating that Hunter’s commitment supports the goal of making Portland and Vancouver safer, stronger communities. The organization expressed expectations for significant results from the Heart Walk campaign with community participation.
The American Heart Association is described in the source as a global leader in resuscitation science, education and training and is the official publisher of CPR guidelines. Through its Nation of Lifesavers™ movement, the AHA is working to ensure more people are prepared to perform CPR and to serve as critical links in the chain of survival.
The Nation of Lifesavers™ initiative supports the AHA’s stated goal of doubling the survival rate from out-of-hospital cardiac arrests by 2030.
The Portland and Vancouver Heart Walks are scheduled for May and June 2027. The source estimates approximately 3,500 participants will walk to celebrate local survivors and the lifesaving progress made in Oregon and southwest Washington.
Companies and organizations interested in participating were directed to contact Hannah Frey, Heart Walk senior development director, at Hannah.Frey@heart.org. Additional event registration and details are available at www.pdxheartwalk.org as reported in the source.
Media inquiries listed in the source may be directed to Jay Wintermeyer at jay.wintermeyer@heart.org. For public inquiries the AHA provides 1-800-AHA-USA1 (1-800-242-8721).
The source also summarizes the American Heart Association’s mission: a long-standing commitment to equitable health, funding research, advocacy for public health, and provision of health information. The AHA reports support from millions of volunteers globally and ongoing work to drive improvements in science, policy and care to advance cardiovascular and stroke outcomes.