A free project with one job: shorten the gap between noticing and acting

SignsToSave is a free, independent public-health education project. It publishes 33 short courses that teach ordinary people to recognize life-threatening emergencies, act in the minutes before help arrives, and know when to call 911 or go to an emergency room.

Why it exists

The most dangerous minutes in an emergency are usually the first ones, and the person standing there is almost never a clinician. It is a spouse, a daughter, a roommate, a coach. The gap between something is wrong and I am calling 911 is where outcomes are decided — and that gap is made of hesitation, not ignorance. Hesitation shrinks when you have seen the pattern before, even on a screen.

So every course here is built around two questions: what does this actually look like when it happens in front of you, and what do you do in the first five minutes? Nothing else made the cut.

Where the content comes from

Content follows published guidance from the American Heart Association, American Red Cross, CDC, SAMHSA, ACOG, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, cited on every course. Every course lists the specific organizations behind it, with links, at the bottom of the page. Where guidance bodies differ — choking technique is the usual example — we teach the American Red Cross lay-rescuer version and say plainly that trained methods vary.

SignsToSave is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the organizations whose published guidance it cites. We do not use their logos and we do not issue certification on their behalf.

The rules we write by

• Recognition and response only. We teach what to notice and what to do. We never teach diagnosis or treatment.
• No invented numbers. Every statistic on this site names its source organization inline. If we are not confident in a figure, we do not publish it.
• Nothing here ever discourages calling for help. When in doubt, call 911. That is the reflex the whole site is built to train.
• Plain language. Every clinical term gets a plain-English explanation the first time it appears.
• Shorter and right beats longer and wrong. When we are not sure something is standard lay-rescuer guidance, we leave it out.

What the certificate is

Pass a quiz and you can download an awareness certificate with your name on it. It is a real record that you learned something, and it is genuinely worth sharing — a friend who sees it may take the course too, which is the entire point.

It is not accredited training. It carries no professional or workplace validity and satisfies no compliance requirement. For hands-on, accredited certification — and you should get it, especially for CPR — go to the American Red Cross or the American Heart Association. Fifteen minutes of reading is not the same as putting your hands on a manikin, and we will never pretend it is.

How it is paid for

It is not. There are no ads, no paywalls, no upsells, no sponsorships and no data for sale. The only two things this site ever asks of you are optional: an email address if you want a single refresher reminder a year from now, and that you share a course with someone you love.

Spot an error? Tell us.

Accuracy matters here more than anything else. If something on this site is out of date, unclear, or wrong, we want to know — please say which course and what the problem is.

What did we get wrong?

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