In 1971, several pharmaceutical companies joined together to form a non-profit organization called the Advanced Coronary Treatment or ACT Foundation. Jim Page was soon hired as its first Director. The organizational goal was to promote the national development of mobile coronary care unit (MCCU) programs which had already been demonstrated at Saint Vincents Hospital in New York City, the Columbus "Heart Mobile" project and other programs in Los Angeles and Seattle. The ACT Foundation then formed The National Committee for Emergency Coronary Care whose members included that of Eugene Nagel from Miami, James Warren from
The Foundation also published a number of printed pamphlets such as the, "Let Us Do Something" which promoted the development of early coronary care systems and vehicles. Follow-on publications such as the 68-page "
Saving Lives with Emergency Coronary Care." were distributed, by the thousands, as both first and second editions. This document was later renamed to reflect the evolution from mobile coronary care to the more comprehensive mobile intensive care concept. It's final title was "Saving Lives with Prehospital Emergency Care."
The ACT Foundation was clearly the first national organization to concentrate on the promotion of widespread acceptance of advanced life support and its publications had a significant effect on increasing the interest of community leaders.