Designations are great, depending on how you look at them.

Being near the top of the list of safest communities in the country is one of those feel-good things that are nice for Warwick to boast about. As for the list of states with the most taxes, or highest rates of unemployment… well, let’s not go there. It could give you angina.

And speaking about the heart, you should not only take pride in safety but also brag about the city’s newest designation as a HeartSafe community. Warwick and Westerly are the first two municipalities to gain such distinction in a joint program of the Department of Health and the American Heart Association.

The program measures a community’s ability to respond to a heart attack by looking at a variety of factors from the availability of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in public buildings people frequent including malls, the airport, libraries and schools. The intent is to heighten awareness that, with a heart attack, timely emergency measures means less damaged heart muscle and the blood circulation can be restored sooner and a better chance the victim will survive and recover.

The recent story of Auggie Zabbo illustrates how important those first few minutes can be. Zabbo is a sales clerk at IM Gann Liquor and he collapsed shortly after reporting for work last fall. His co-workers were not trained in CPR but understood its importance and had seen the procedure performed on television. They didn’t hesitate to act. They went to work on Zabbo while waiting for Warwick Rescue to get there. It was touch and go for Zabbo for a while but he survived and is now back at work.

Zabbo’s story is uplifting. He makes up part of the 4 percent survival rate for heart attack here and across the country.

But it’s that rate the Kent HeartSafe Foundation is looking to improve. It’s achievable. There are places across the country where the survival rate is 50 percent and higher because people know what to do.

To fulfill its mission, the local foundation, founded in 2006, has increased public awareness, advocated AEDs in businesses and other locations and trained hundreds of people in CPR and how to use an AED. Last year, the foundation trained 800 people during February. This month, the foundation aims to train another 1,000.

We can take heart, literally and figuratively, in Warwick’s designation as HeartSafe Community. It is people like Dr. Joseph Spinale, founding president of the foundation; EMS Coordinator with the Fire Department Dave Kurowski; Pat Seltzer, RN, of the City and organizations including Kent Hospital, the Central Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce and the New England Institute of Technology have all pushed to make it happen.

Now it’s up to us to learn more so that, when the unexpected happens, we can step in and improve the odds for heart attack victims’ survival.