YAS pioneer awarded MBE

Congratulations to Jason Carlyon who has been awarded an MBE in the King's Birthday Honours list 2024 in recognition of his services to resuscitation.

Jason, who is a Paramedic and Community Engagement Manager at Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust, has been given the honour for being a driving force behind the local, national and international roll-out of the multi-award-winning Restart a Heart campaign which provides life-saving cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training to members of the public.

It started in 2014 when, in just six weeks, he recruited a small project team to organise CPR training for 11,000 youngsters at 49 secondary schools across Yorkshire on one day. The event generated national publicity and was the largest event of its kind ever seen in the world.

The campaign has continued to grow, with the support of partners including the Resuscitation Council and British Heart Foundation, and celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, teaching CPR to 234,708 young people during 1,047 school visits thanks to 39,213 volunteers - on just 10 days during this ten-year period. A number of students have used the skills learnt on Restart a Heart Day to save the lives of people in cardiac arrest.

Thanks to Jason's tireless campaigning, all UK ambulance trusts adopted the YAS model for Restart a Heart Day and he influenced the roll-out of the campaign internationally to countries including Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Sri Lanka and America.

Jason is passionate about improving the outcomes of patients in cardiac arrest and is committed to improving the rate of bystander CPR which has increased from 39.9% when the campaign was launched in 2014 to 75.7% in 2022*.

He is always looking at new and innovative ways to develop community-based CPR training, one being the development of the Pillow Partner in 2021 as a simple, low-cost CPR training aid, supported by the Yorkshire Ambulance Service Charity.

Jason said: "I am delighted, humbled and extremely proud to be awarded an MBE in the King's Birthday Honours 2024.

"As is often the case with awards and honours, they represent the work of a group of people rather than just the individual receiving the honour. That is very much the case here and I have been fortunate to work with a small team of dedicated individuals and hundreds of amazing volunteers who have been crucial in the success of the campaign."

Peter Reading, Chief Executive of Yorkshire Ambulance Service, said: "Many congratulations to Jason for this honour which recognises his ability to push the boundaries in terms of community CPR training and achieve some ground-breaking work which has undoubtedly helped to put Yorkshire on the map as an exemplar of best practice. I'm sure that, along with other efforts within Yorkshire Ambulance Service to strengthen all aspects of the Chain of Survival, our out-of-hospital survival rates will reflect his unfailing commitment in years to come."

*The Annual Epidemiology Report for Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Outcomes is published by the University of Warwick. These figures relate to bystander CPR rates for non-witnessed and bystander-witnessed cases.