As February can often be considered the month of love, it is no surprise that decorative hearts can be seen quite often.
Valencia High School, in collaboration with UCLA’s chapter of Saving Hearts Foundation, focused on the functionality of hearts, instead, and offered a free screening for residents from the ages of 12 to 35 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday.

“We’re a part of the UCLA Saving Hearts Foundation, and we’re basically an organization that screens youth for sudden cardiac arrest, because sudden cardiac arrest often goes undetected, and you can find out you have it when the incidence happens,” said molecular cell and developmental biology UCLA student Adithi Nayak. “The way it works is we have people take vitals, they get their EKG done, and then they get reviewed by a cardiologist. They get a comprehensive evaluation of the heart, as well as their electrical signals of their heart to make sure everything’s looking OK.”
Executive Director Andre Sanavi discussed the process of detecting any suspicious heart conditions once an EKG is conducted.
“We have 12 lead EKGs that we’re doing here, and then they also get a chance to do a cardiologist consultation for free. If anything looks suspicious on that first EKG, they get to do an echocardiogram, which is like an ultrasound of the heart,” Sanavi said. “They’ll ‘reconsolve’ with the cardiologist, and see if there’s something they may need to follow up on. If not, they can go to checkout. If they do, we like to follow up with them to make sure they get the care that they need and follow up on a potential condition that they might have.”
All volunteers from the Saving Hearts Foundation are UCLA undergraduates. In addition to having a consultation and personal assessment, residents could also learn to navigate CPR from Valencia’s HOSA – Future Health Professionals volunteers.


“Currently there’s roughly 30 of us, and we’re collaborating with the HOSA chapter at Valencia High School, which prepares high school students for medical academy,” said Jaipal Virdi, UCLA chapter president. “While people wait for their one-on-one consultation, [they show people] how to do CPR. We have a paramedic team over here [showing] how to use a tourniquet and other relevant medical information.”
According to both Sanavi and Virdi, the screening is completely free for the schools, which is set up by donations and sponsors.
“We take queries through our website, so any school administrators that want to put on an event at their school can contact us through there to set up an exploratory meeting,” Sanavi said.
According to Jonathan Gedalia, medical science academy teacher and athletic trainer at Valencia, this is the school’s fourth time to host the foundation.
“This is our fourth one that we’ve hosted every two years. We’re usually about 150 to 200 per event. It’s just a good thing for our community that we try to do. The purpose of this event is more focused on our student athletes, because the No. 1 cause of death in high school athletics is sudden cardiac arrest from undiagnosed heart conditions,” Gedalia said. “We try to add the education component too. [If you can], come get screened if you see a screening.”
For more information or to donate, visit savingheartsfoundation.com.