Heart to Heart Global Cardiac Care

Globally, Heart to Heart's vision is that a child born with a heart defect -- anywhere in the world -- will have access to life-saving heart care. We are working to realize this vision by identifying, collaborating with, and advancing medical communities that are ready for a transfer of knowledge. Currently, Heart to Heart's goal is to finalize our Into the Heartland campaign (2002-2019) in Russia and bring our initiative to South America, Going Global: Peru (2016-2026), to scale.

To finalize our Campaign in Russia, we need to graduate 2 sites to self-sustainability and launch our seventh and final site.

Heart to Heart has started to train medical professionals in Lima, Peru in adult and pediatric cardiac medicine.

To finalize our Into the Heartland in Russia by the end of 2019, Heart to Heart plans to accomplish the following activities:

Graduate current pediatric cardiac program-in-development in Kaliningrad (Northwestern federal district) to self-sustainability in 2017.
Steps: Recruit, develop, coordinate and transport 2 surgical-educational teams traveling from the U.S. to Kaliningrad.

Graduate current pediatric cardiac program-in-development in Chelyabinsk (Urals federal district) to self-sustainability in 2019.
Steps: Recruit, develop, coordinate and transport 3 surgical-educational teams traveling from the U.S. to Chelyabinsk.

Launch seventh and final pediatric cardiac collaboration in Khabarovsk (Far Eastern federal district) in 2016, and graduate this program to self-sustainability by end of 2019.
Steps: (1) Assess potential for successful collaboration. (2) Sign a bilingual protocol agreement. (3) Recruit, develop, coordinate and transport 4 surgical-educational teams traveling from the U.S. to the Far Eastern federal district of Russia.

Although Heart to Heart's annual surgical-educational missions to each partner site are the highlight of each team's programmatic year, much work is done year-round to support and evolve each team-in-training. While our colleagues abroad are putting new skills we teach into practice in between our visits, members of our Medical Advisory Council are reviewing surgical outcomes to determine our next "educational" steps.

To launch our Going Global program in Peru, Heart to Heart plans to accomplish the following activities:
+Increase the capacity of the pre-existing cardiac infrastructure, which already serves a large number of Limeñans with heart disease, but cannot meet the current need.
+Help cardiac specialists in Lima to achieve surgical outcomes comparable to the U.S. and Europe, within a few years;
+"Train the trainers," who will join us to expand access to Peru's provinces during the second phase of our collaboration.

Heart to Heart has 27 years of experience in developing self-sustaining children's heart centers in areas of need. Using our rigorous, data-driven, educational approach, we have trained more than 500 cardiac specialists on two continents. These newly-trained specialists have already saved more than 25,000 underserved patients. Our wealth of institutional knowledge enables us to approach the needs of a nascent cardiac community as a whole and to design a customized blueprint for their specific development needs. In 2014, a Heart to Heart article detailing our sustainable program model was accepted for publication in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25263713), the most prestigious cardiac journal worldwide. At the heart of our organization are more than 100 dedicated specialists -- leaders in the field of cardiac medicine -- who volunteer year after year because they have seen the dramatic results of their mentoring when applied within the framework of our program model. Lastly, our professional, multilingual staff is the "glue" that holds it all together -- providing strong administrative support to align the year-round work of our volunteers and teams-in-training abroad.

Heart to Heart has saved the lives of over 25,000 children and adults in Russia. Over the past 25 years, we have trained over 500 medical professionals and donated over $20 million worth of medical equipment, supplies, and medicines. 27% of all pediatric open heart surgeries performed in Russia in 2013 were performed at Heart to Heart sites. Our success in developing self-sustaining regional pediatric cardiac centers in three of Russia's Federal Districts (total population 63 million) demonstrates that, in a relatively short period of time, modern heart care can be made accessible to millions of families in a cost-effective and replicable manner. Through our collaborative partnerships Heart to Heart continues to capitalize on Russia's evolving nationwide cardiac care infrastructure to give millions of more families access to care now.

There remains much to be done. Cardiovascular diseases continue to be the leading cause of death globally, three-quarters of which occur in low and middle-income countries. Worldwide, regardless of location, congenital heart defects (CHD) occur in about 1% of births, affecting 1.3 million children each year. Over 89 million adults suffer from valvular disease worldwide. And yet, the vast majority of people do not have access to life-saving heart care. To begin addressing the dramatic disparity in global access to heart care, we are expanding our data-driven, cost-effective, replicable and scalable program model to Peru starting in 2016. The goal in Peru will be to establish a national infrastructure capable of providing timely, advance cardiac care to children and adults suffering from cardiovascular diseases.