IOWA  — Saturday is National Stop the Bleed day, and local doctors want to make sure Iowans know what to do in case of a traumatic event.

The Stop the Bleed campaign was launched in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. The Obama administration created the initiative as a proactive way to respond to mass casualty incidents. Participants are trained on how to apply pressure and dress wounds to stop the bleeding until a paramedic arrives.

Doctors see it as one good takeaway from these tragedies.

“What we are teaching all emerged from the dreadful event that was Sandy Hook,” said Dr. Richard Sidwell, a trauma surgeon at Iowa Methodist Hospital. “And as we started to look at what can we do to help, this is what came out of it. And then it expanded. It started with that mass shooting thing, but then it expanded to anything that causes people to be injured and bleeding. That’s what we’re really trying to help with.”

Campaign organizers hope to one day make the program just as prevalent as CPR training. To learn more, visit dhs.gov/stopthebleed.