About Us

About Stroke Awareness Foundation

SAF strives to improve community awareness for stroke and its treatment through advocacy, education and public awareness programs in the community.

We continue to support hospital stroke center CERTIFICATION and REDIRECTION efforts of paramedics and emergency care, as well continued PUBLIC EDUCATION of the warning signs of stroke and the need to seek proper medical services immediately.

• Before the Stroke Awareness Foundation was founded in 2002, Santa Clara County had neither a single certified stroke center, nor a redirection policy to ensure stroke victims were taken to the proper hospital. Today, we have a different story to tell.
• The Stroke Awareness Foundation has been instrumental in helping local hospitals to become Certified Stroke Centers. There are 9 (nine) Primary Stroke Centers certified by the Joint Commission for Accreditation in Santa Clara County.  This represents about 20% of the 48 Stroke Centers in California and the largest concentration of certified centers in the country.
• In 2003, Good Samaritan Hospital was the first of five in the country and the first in Santa Clara County to become a Stroke Certified Hospital. Earlier this month, Stanford Hospital became the first in the country to receive the Joint Commission’s new Comprehensive Stroke Center certification. Read the press release HERE.
• We advocated for a policy to redirect emergency medical transportation in Santa Clara County so that all stroke victims will be transported directly to a Certified Stroke Center. This ground-breaking legislation, unanimously approved by the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors, was the first of its kind in California.
• SAF has reached over 90,000 people through our participation in local health fairs and health related events including two regional symposiums at Stanford University.  Our educational program has been directed to more than 17,000 students, families and community organizations.
• For more than two years the Stroke Awareness Foundation has been working with the California Department of Public Health to develop a plan of Stroke Prevention that will serve everyone in the state of California.
• The Stroke Awareness Foundation has been recognized nationally as a leader in their focused coordination of certification, redirection and education.  SAF is once again facilitating media advertising for National Stroke Alert Day with more than a dozen county agencies.
• Advertising for Stroke Happens/Stroke Awareness has been reflected on VTA buses, informational sticky notes, banners, newspapers articles in English, Spanish and Vietnamese.
• SAF has received significant attention from local and national media outlets, such as San Jose Magazine, San Jose Business Journal, The San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley News, CNN and The Wall Street Journal