Thank you for visiting my fundraising page for the Congenital Heart Walk. Raising funds for CHD research is critically important to all Heart Warriors and Heart Angels, and personally very meaningful to me. 

I gave birth to Heart Warrior Sebastian Jack on October 12, 2019. We found out about his congenital heart defect (CHD)- a ventricular septal defect or 'hole in the heart' when he was 5 days old. He had open heart surgery at Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City on February 20, 2020. Sebastian is a joy to everyone in our family and for those friends that have met him. He has a lot of people left to meet due to the COVID pandemic, but we are so excited and fortunate to have him in our lives today thanks to the amazing team of professionals that has cared for him his entire life!

Here are the facts:

• CHDs are the most common birth defects. CHDs occur in almost 1% of births.
  
• An approximate 100-200 deaths are due to unrecognized heart disease in newborns each year. These numbers exclude those dying before diagnosis.
• Nearly 40,000 infants in the U.S. are born each year with CHDs.
• Approximately 25% of children born with a CHD will need heart surgery or other interventions to survive.

Please help fund CHD research by making a donation to my personal fundraising page. Why do we need to fundraise for CHD research? Well..

• Congenital heart defects occur frequently and are often life threatening, yet research into them is grossly underfunded in relation to the prevalence of the disease.
• Of every dollar the government spends on medical funding only a fraction of a penny is directed toward congenital heart defect research.
• In the last decade death rates for congenital heart defects have declined by almost 30% due to advances made through research.
• There are 40 different types of congenital heart defects. Little is known about the cause of most them. There is not yet a cure for any of them.