Why The Heart of a Child Foundation?

There is simply no national organization devoted to support the study of congenital heart defects.

Most research into cardiovascular disease is focused on "middle-aged" heart disease and perversely, pediatric research and applications of treatments for pediatric use often lack for sponsors. For example, the American Heart Association, the largest and primary funding organization for research in heart disease allocates less than 5% of its annual research budget toward pediatric efforts. The natural but unfortunate by-product is that it is difficult to attract the best minds into the field of pediatric cardiology when funding is so much more readily available for adult heart diseases. Today there are over 16,000 board-certified adult cardiologists, but only 1,300 pediatric cardiologists.

Additionally, many doctors who specialize in pediatrics do so because of their desire to work with children. It is more difficult to get this interest correlated with what some consider a less people intensive career in research.

The Heart of a Child Foundation seeks to remedy this situation by becoming the preeminent national organization focused on the study and repair of congenital heart defects, the number one birth defect in newborns. The Foundation expects to achieve its goals by:

Building a sizable endowment that will be able to direct meaningful dollars to fund research and clinical fellowships to attract and educate medical professionals.

Coordinating and directly funding basic research efforts focused on the root causes of congenital heart defects, such as molecular genetic research as well as clinical advancements in the surgical and imaging fields.

Disseminating information regarding advances and specialized knowledge in the field of pediatric cardiology to the broader medical community and to parents of children born with congenital heart defects.

The Heart of a Child Foundation intends to fill an important gap in the terribly under-funded and under-publicized field of pediatric cardiology. Our mission is critical to the survival of generations of children born with congenital heart defects.