LANSING - Beginning next school year, students in Michigan schools will need to learn CPR Prior to graduating.

Students will only be required to learn the hands-only component of CPR.

Hands only CPR can be just as effective as mouth to mouth to resuscitation.

According to experts mouth to mouth resuscitation prevented people from performing CPR in the past when they did not want to put their mouth on a stranger's mouth.

The hope with teaching students CPR is to help save lives.

"There have been numerous occasions and we had many advocates actually who spoke to the fact of friends or family members going down on an athletic field and they're faced in quite an unfortunate situation where quite a few people stand around and it's because nobody's really trained and they're uncomfortable to try and administer CPR," said Dave Hodgkins, the Government Relations Director for the American Heart Association.

Michigan will be joining thirty-four other states that currently require CPR training for students.