The Moral Obligation to Give Back

If you haven't yet subscribed to Adventures of a Funky Heart, (written by an adult CHD survivor and packed with humor and insight), I highly encourage you to peruse the interview he recently conducted with Amy Verstappen, President of the Adult Congenital Heart Association (ACHA) and a survivor of Congenitally Corrected Transposition of the Great Arteries. In her interview with Steve, Amy discusses her "moral obligation" to give back to the CHD community after her personal experiences as an adult survivor. Her personal story is an interesting one, but the action she has taken is nothing short of inspirational.

In the past year, the ACHA has recently joined with several other Congenital Heart Defect organizations to form the National Congenital Heart Coalition. Amy is actively involved in creating new legislation to bring much needed research and attention to CHD issues.

“I am 100% positive that in the long run we will have an integrated, high quality care system for all survivors,” Amy says in the interview. “Our really long term goal is to have a very unified system with research, a registry, a way to quantify outcomes, all the centers talking to each other, sharing information and building knowledge together...”.

Ms. Verstappen is determined to educate parents on the long-term needs of CHD patients. She tells Steve that she “...presented a pilot version of [a new brochure designed by ACHA specifically for parents] to a group of Heart Moms - all leaders of some of the advocacy groups for children - three of them told me that no one had ever told them that their child was going to need this level of care.” Amy goes on to describe some of the questions that parents of children with a heart defect should be asking.

I can tell you, as one of those moms who didn't know or understand the long term implications (I have a child with Transposition of the Greater Arteries who I was told was "fixed!"), that the information provided is valuable and too important not to take a moment to read.

I highly encourage you to take a minute and check out the latest entry at Adventures of a Funky Heart! Not only is it a great personal story of one of the movers and shakers of the CHD community, but it is also a great source of information for parents, teens and adults alike!