Damar Hamlin-backed HEARTS Act signed into law by President Biden
The Cardiomyopathy Health Education, Awareness, and Research, and AED Training in the Schools Act of 2024 (HEARTS Act), backed by Damar Hamlin, was signed into law by President Biden on Monday.
When he’s honest and humble with himself, Damar Hamlin admits that he never saw this coming. The Buffalo Bills safety always envisioned himself making an impact in his direct community, and he has. But now, he’s making a more widespread impact across the country.
The Cardiomyopathy Health Education, Awareness, and Research, and AED Training in the Schools Act of 2024 (HEARTS Act) was signed into law by President Joe Biden on Monday.
Bills player Damar Hamlin greets students at an event with Sen. Chuck Schumer on Dec. 9, 2024, to promote the HEARTS Act in Congress. Derek Gee, Buffalo News
The HEARTS Act, backed by Hamlin, will provide direct grants to elementary and secondary schools to support CPR and automated external defibrillator (AED) training, to fund the purchase of AEDs and support the development of cardiac emergency response plans.
Hamlin needed both CPR and an AED to save his life when he went into cardiac arrest on Jan. 2, 2023, during "Monday Night Football." Since then, he’s been working to make sure others will have access to the same lifesaving care he received.
Hamlin said this has been “super-fulfilling,” as he finds yet another way to use his cardiac emergency to help future generations. Now, that will happen at the federal level.
“It means completion,” Hamlin said Thursday. “It means just a process of a bunch of people coming together to make tomorrow better for people that come after us – all coming together, getting something done. So, it feels good to finally have that done.”
The bill passed the House of Representatives in September, and it passed the Senate unanimously on Dec. 10.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) worked with Hamlin throughout the process.
“This legislation goes beyond the field and its impacts will stretch thousands of miles outside Buffalo to help millions of kids,” Schumer said in a statement.
For the 26-year-old Hamlin, his foray into the political world came with some trepidation. Though he recognized the greater good, it came with talking more and more about his traumatic event.
“I was uncomfortable when I started the phase of speaking out on my situation and doing my part to get it passed,” Hamlin said. “But I knew that with time and with growth, it would all pay off. So, here’s the moment.”
Teammates like veteran safety Micah Hyde have watched Hamlin evolve throughout his journey.
“He’s amazing, it’s amazing,” Hyde said. “Just a resilient person to be able to go through what he went through and still be hacking away at the game of football, hacking away at life, just a positive role model for a lot of people.
“And I said this way back when – I definitely look up to him and how he attacked this situation.”
Hamlin said he was napping when the news broke that Biden signed the bill. He received phone calls from his father, Mario, Bills safeties coach Joe Danna and Nancy Brown, the CEO of the American Heart Association. All were reaching out to congratulate him.
“Just a lot of people that are on my support team, supporting everything that I'm doing, engage with everything I'm doing, just reaching out, letting me know that we really made a legacy step there,” Hamlin said.
The bill has had major support from the American Heart Association, as well as from the NFL's Smart Hearts Coalition, among other groups.
“The bipartisan HEARTS Act is a monumental step in saving lives from cardiac arrest,” Brown posted Thursday on X. “Thank you to (Hamlin) for inspiring this lifesaving initiative and to the members of Congress and advocates nationwide who have worked for over two years to make our schools safer.”