Miami Beach Senior High School will be the first school in the state to offer lifesaving "Stop The Bleed" kits in every classroom. The kits may appear small in size, but when you open them you’ll find life-saving tools that anyone can use - once trained properly - to stop blood loss on a shooting victim.
"If we're preparing them for drills, we might as well prepare them how to save a life," said Aimee Hershkowitz, the safety chair at Miami Beach High.
The idea has been her mission for the past year and came about after the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, as gun violence is schools became a national topic of conversation. Many here in Miami-Dade schools, including Hershkowitz, had ties to MSD and wanted to take the steps to bring those live saving items to the beach.
Doctors from Jackson Health System volunteered to train teachers on how to use these in life-saving moments - and with the help of many others - these kits will now be mounted in every room.
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"It’s just that additional layer of school safety protection," said Lori Alhadeff, who lost her daughter Alyssa during the Parkland shooting and helped with the effort to bring the kits to Miami Beach.
"If the worst happens that there’s something that we can do to put a tourniquet on a student's arm or leg, stop the bleed and save their life."
Many "Stop The Bleed" kits are already inside Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School in Broward County. The effort took more than a year to get going, but now those 137 kits are inside each room - and 1 or 2 will sit in common areas inside the school.
