UMass Chan Medical School student Beatriz Bacelar crouched over a CPR manikin to show staff at the Latino Education Institute the pace and pressure needed to save a life. Equipped with relevant statistics and English and Spanish songs around 120 beats per minute, this T.H. Chan School of Medicine student would repeat this hands-only CPR training more than a dozen times with numerous community groups across the Worcester area.
“The survival rate of a cardiac arrest in Central Massachusetts is much lower than the national average. Teaching CPR creates herd immunity because when more people know how to do CPR, our community will be safer,” Bacelar said. “We're supplying people with the tools they need to teach each other and perpetuate the training generationally.”
Bacelar is part of Community CPR, an education program funded by a 2024 grant from the Remillard Family Community Service Fund and inspired by its predecessor, “Prescription CPR,” led by Chad Darling, MD, professor of emergency medicine, the late Joseph Sabato, MD’79, associate professor of emergency medicine, and Hanna Ahmed, MD, associate professor of medicine.
Since launching three years ago, Community CPR has partnered with groups such as Worcester Public Schools, the Diocese of Worcester, the Manny 267 Foundation, Josh Thibodeau Helping Hearts Foundation and Road to Care. There have been more than 300 UMass Chan and undergraduate student volunteers from partner universities. Blackstone House, one of the learning communities in the T.H. Chan School of Medicine, has taken on this initiative as a service project.
Bacelar’s contributions to CPR training are the latest in her journey to become a doctor. She comes from a Brazilian community on the North Shore of Massachusetts. Born in Salem, Bacelar studied cellular biology at Boston University and minored in Portuguese—a language she’s always spoken but hadn’t formally learned.
“I’ve seen how a lot of Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking populations are underinsured or uninsured. My upbringing is what brought me to medicine,” Bacelar said.
Bacelar transferred from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College to the T.H. Chan School of Medicine for the third year of medical school to be closer to her community, joining her husband, fellow medical student Victor Bacelar. Beatriz Bacelar hopes to match with her husband and pursue emergency medicine.
