There’s a shocking gender gap in who gets Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) from bystanders.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women, taking a woman’s life approximately every minute in the US alone. Though prompt delivery of CPR can triple a cardiac arrest victims’ chances of survival, WOMEN ARE 27% LESS LIKELY THAN MEN TO RECEIVE BYSTANDER CPR. This makes a big difference: only 1 in 8 women survive cardiac arrest, versus 1 in 5 men.

We set out to close this gender gap. We had zero paid media dollars, so we knew our solution would need to be capable of receiving mass coverage by the media AND immediate adoption by the communities most in place to make change.

We found our solution in design -- a unique approach that was equally about sparking conversation as it was about providing practical experience that would close the gap: The Womanikin.

There are countless examples for that underscore that the world has been designed for men, not women: from NASA not having space suits to fit female astronauts to crash test dummies having mostly male body sizes. It’s even been the subject of a best-selling book, “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men” by Caroline Perez.

But nowhere is this gender gap as pronounced -- or potentially deadly -- than in the way we teach CPR: We all learn on flat-chested manikins. Gender bias in CPR manikin design could be costing the lives of 30,000 women per year in the US, alone.

Enter our idea, The Womanikin. Created at the peak of the #metoo movement, where unwanted sexual touching was a daily news story, it became even more important to confront the stigma head on. We needed people to actually practice touching a woman’s chest while performing CPR.

We interviewed the authors of the American Heart Association study that first reported the gap and found three underlying reasons:

1. People think cardiac arrest is a men’s issue.

2. People are uncomfortable touching breasts.

3. When people do deliver CPR to a woman, they often do it incorrectly.

These 3 issues can be remedied by hands-on education.

The lightning strike moment came when we realized that, while health organizations teach tens of millions of people CPR every year, the manikins they teach it on are flat-chested, male torsos.

And so we created The Womanikin -- an attachment that could go over any standard, flat-chested CPR manikin to simulate CPR on someone with breasts.

This new product hit a nerve with the public, creating buzz while also offering a practical solution to instructors teaching how to administer CPR to women. We made the design open source, free, and equitable.

We worked with resuscitation scientists to design the Womanikin, but also needed to keep in mind the realities of CPR educators, many of whom are independent and travel with limited trunk space. Moreover, new CPR training manikins are extremely expensive -- educators use them for 300,000 compressions before replacing them. Creating an entirely new manikin was out of the question.

The Womanikin is portable, affordable, and modular – something that would work with educators’ existing male dummies.

An added benefit: it also looks like an attachment. In-market research shows that this provides a teachable moment for educators.

Our mission was to save lives, not profit. So, we designed the Womanikin with easily available materials, and made the design open-source and universal.

Because women of color receive CPR at a disproportionately lower rate than white women, we sourced fabric that was shades darker than the standard manikin, inspiring deeper dialogue.

We approached the United State of Women, a national non-profit, who agreed to launch the first posts about The Womanikin on their social channels, showcasing our video assets, driving to womanikin.org.

Knowing that it can be extremely difficult for an organic social campaign to go viral, we timed the campaign launch around a relevant media moment: National CPR Week (June 1-7). We knew The Womanikin would give publishers and networks something interesting to run alongside traditional CPR stories. This PR strategy was highly effective: we received enormous press pickup during National CPR Week.

To engage the medical community, we brought on board Dr. Holly Andersen, notable cardiologist and leader of the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign, to help with outreach to the medical press. Because of this endorsement, we received widespread coverage in medical editorial and social, and have been invited to 8 international medical conferences.

The success of The Womanikin has been nothing short of astounding.

With zero paid media budget, we generated major news stories globally, and earned 23 million social impressions.

Began an ongoing partnership with American Heart Association training centers to manufacture Womanikin devices at scale for use in university training.

We were invited to 8 medical conferences and panels, and established a partnership with Dr. Holly Andersen, cardiologist and medical advisor to the Women’s Heart Alliance.

17% increase in our awareness KPI, examining a basket of search-terms related to female heart-health and CPR between launch on 6/1 and 8/31, compared to previous year.

62 CPR training organizations requested Womanikin attachments or downloaded our toolkit to build their own.

Gold Effie for proving The Womanikin saves women’s lives.

Fully equalizing the CPR gender-gap (our ultimate goal), would save over 30,000 women’s lives per year in the US, alone.

Let’s not stop.