The Mark Twain Health Care District established a new Calaveras County community program called AED for Life. AED for Life is a long-term project created by the District geared towards improving cardiac arrest outcomes throughout Calaveras County. The District has formed a partnership with the Calaveras County Community Foundation and San Joaquin Community Foundation in order to continue the efforts of expanding the amount of automatic external defibrillators across Calaveras County. Linda Kangeter, CCF President and Louis Ponik with SJCF presented Dr. Smart, CEO of the District with a grant check for $4,000 to help with the "AED for Life" Program which purchases of AEDs for Calaveras County. This grant will allow the AED for Life program to purchase an additional 2 automatic external defibrillators.

The goal of the project is to expand the number of functioning AEDs in Calaveras County as well as providing proper education to Calaveras County residents. This project was created in May of 2023 and has completed phase 1 consisting of distributing the first 10 AEDs. The first year of this project focused on improving, replacing, or purchasing AEDs for local fire departments, EMS agencies, and law enforcement. Living in a rural area has some drawbacks, one of them being the longer EMS response time. A cardiac arrest patient has approximately 10 minutes without compressions or AED before death. Our mission is to deploy more AEDs in Calaveras County for the AED to reach the patient faster. The Mark Twain Health Care District is grateful for any and all funding we receive to support the AED for Life program.