CHD Week: February 7th-14th

The goal of Intermountain Healing Hearts (IHH) is to support families of children and adults with Congenital Heart Defects (CHDs) and childhood onset heart disease in Utah and in the Intermountain West. CHD Awareness Week, which is February 7th-14th, is a special time of the year for this organization and others to spread awareness about CHDs and childhood onset heart disease. Many individuals wonder what they can do during this time. Some ideas for individual members to participate include sharing CHD facts and information via social media, creating a fundraiser, or sharing your own story of how your life has been impacted by CHDs. In addition to these personal efforts, throughout CHD week, IHH shares other ideas and hosts activities to encourage awareness and offer support to its members.  We hope you all will join us during this time to spread awareness. Below is a list of activities that IHH has promoted throughout CHD Awareness Week.


CLICK HERE to watch IHH member, Tammy Alsup, be interviewed by KSL TV for CHD Week 2021!


CLICK HERE  to listen to the 2020 radio interview between IHH and the Wasatch Gazette that shares details about CHD Week activities and events!

CHD Week 2021 Details

Feb 7 (Sunday) – Share Your Story

Tune in to a Facebook Live at 10:00 AM MST on Intermountain Healing Heart’s Facebook page to kick off the week! This year’s theme is “I am the one” and “We support our one.” The “one” refers to the fact that Congenital Heart Defects are the most common type of birth defect, affecting nearly 1 out of every 100 children born in the United States and across the world. CHDs are the leading cause of birth-defect related deaths, and while some CHD's are minor, approximately 50% will require some sort of invasive procedure (such as open heart surgery). We all know how important community is on this heart journey! Today we invite you to share your CHD story on social media or in person. Tag #iamtheone #wesupportourone #ihhearts and #ihheartsCHDweek so we can raise awareness and feature some of our heart heroes! Also share IHH's website or social media accounts with another heart family. We love this community, and we are here to help and strengthen each other! Feel free to share a photo of the heart warrior in your life on our group facebook page, as well! 

Feb 8 (Monday) – Cookies to the Hospital & Facebook Frames


We could not do it without our hospital heart family! IHH will be delivering cookies to the Heart Center at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake and Riverton to honor those who do so much to help our families. 

As an online community, we encourage you to use the IHH Facebook frames that have been created for the week. Simply tap on your existing profile picture (or upload a new desired profile picture), click “Add Frame” and search for “Intermountain Healing Hearts,” then choose from any of our specially-designed CHD week frames and click “Save”!

Feb 9 (Tuesday) – Dress Up & Give

Today is the day we encourage others to donate to our cause, and specifically to helping IHH families! Create a post on your Facebook Page using the “Raise Money” feature and fundraise for Intermountain Healing Hearts. Link to the IHH donation page on your social media accounts. Ask businesses you have connections with if they are willing to provide donations (physical or monetary) to IHH for future fundraising activities such as the Walk for Healing Hearts. Direct as many people as you can to the IHH website and explain that donations are tax deductible and go to help local families like you! Donations are used for activities, grants, and much more! CLICK HERE for donation information!

On this day we also want to dress up for CHD! For those CHD warriors that have had open heart surgery, the scar down the middle of their chest is often referred to as their “zipper.”  Not all CHD warriors have a zipper scar, but may have other scars from chest tubes, cath lab procedures, IVs, and the list goes on and on. We are proud of our warriors! Consider wearing multiple zippers, hearts on your sleeve, heart walk shirts, or all red! Whatever you do to dress up, do it to spread awareness and start as many conversations as you can; after all, it is HEART DAY! 

Feb 10 (Wednesday) – Adopt a Meal & Grab Bags

IHH has adopted a meal at Primary Children’s Hospital at the Ronald McDonald Room on the third floor. We encourage those who are inpatient to grab a sack lunch from 1:00-1:15 PM. We hope you enjoy your lunch from IHH!

As an IHH community, we will also be doing grab bag drop offs!  Each bag has some heart swag for you and your family. We’ll announce the location information on social media as well as the estimated time of the drop, then post a picture of the location where we dropped the bag. The first person to find the bag gets to keep it! Please post a picture if you are the one to find it! You won’t want to miss these!

February 11 (Thursday) – Online Bingo

To help connect us during this time, we are trying something new and are going to do an online bingo game at 6:00 PM MST. Prizes will be given! For those interested in attending (virtually), please sign up here: https://forms.gle/eUWBNAowkHV4iqPaA (Only one sign up is required per family.)

February 12 (Friday) – Fresh Food Friday & Facts

We all know how rough catching meals at the hospital can be. This Fresh Food Friday, IHH wants to help our inpatient heart families at the hospital by treating them to some food! If you are going to be inpatient at this time or know of someone else in our group that is, please send tammy@ihhearts.org a message with the appropriate Venmo information.

As an online community, today is the perfect time to share facts about CHD over social media or in any other way you see fit! Get creative as you find ways to spread awareness! We have included some facts you can share on our Facebook pages!


Saturday 13 (Saturday) – License Plate Push & Heart Scavenger Hunt


IHH is still in the process of collecting applications for the Utah CHD speciality license plate. Before the license plates can be manufactured, IHH needs 500 vehicles registered for the plates. Because of generous donations, the application fee has already been paid for the rest of the 500 plates needed before plates can be printed! We simply need people to sign up! There will be an annual fee of $25/year for those who choose to continue after the first year, and IHH will receive the yearly $25 annual fee proceeds that the license plates generate. This is an amazing fundraising opportunity for our community! Anyone with a vehicle registered in Utah (car, trailer, rv etc) can order this license plate, so please spread the word to your family and friends! Find the application and more instructions/FAQ at http://www.intermountainhealinghearts.org/chd-license-plate. After filling out the license plate application, simply email it to chdplate@ihhearts.org. It's as easy as that!

In addition to the license plate push, we have a fun social media campaign planned for this day that is a great way to get everyone you know involved in raising awareness about CHDs!  We will be doing a photo scavenger hunt! Simply find a heart or something that resembles a heart– it could be a sticker, paper heart pinned on, felt heart, something in nature, etc.  You can get as creative as you would like or keep it simple.  Ideas include having your heart hero’s name or picture on your heart, or going on a walk to see what you can find! Once you’ve found your heart, take a picture and post it to your social media (facebook, twitter, instagram, etc) with the hashtags #iamtheone #wesupportourone #ihhearts and #ihheartsCHDweek We would love to see you all participating! Get your family and friends involved and let’s see how big we can make this! Remember to use the hashtags so we can see all your lovely hearts! We will feature some of the pictures on our social media pages!

Sunday 14 (Sunday) – Moment of Silence

This Sunday we set aside special time to honor those angels we have lost too soon, those warriors who continue to fight, and those yet to be born. We hope by bringing awareness that early detection can be made, additional research can be done, grants can be given to families in need, and support for families can be given through the non-profit organization Intermountain Healing Hearts.

We will be having a Facebook Live event to honor our Angels. Please take time to have a moment of silence and even light a candle for those we have lost. 


Thank you for participating in our IHH CHD Awareness Week! We look forward to growing closer together as a community and to spreading awareness for this cause that is so close to all of our HEARTS! If you need any additional information, please contact our VP of Public Relations, tammy@ihhearts.org.

Past CHD Weeks

These are the things IHH has done in past years to celebrate CHD week and help spread CHD awareness.

2020

CHD Week during 2020 was one of our most successful events! Governor Herbert signed the CHD Week Declaration and IHH was featured in a Wasatch Gazette radio interview (CLICK HERE  to listen). As a group, we hosted successful fundraisers at Chick-fil-A and on Giving Day, and members donated blood, shared facts about CHDs, dressed up, and Heart Attacked someone they were grateful for! We had a lot of participation and enjoyed honoring the heart warriors and their families in our community!

2019

Our 2019 CHD week included thank you hearts for hospital staff, an IHH radio interview, a meal for inpatient families hosted in the Ronald McDonald Family Room, and a donation drive for items for care packages that we give to inpatient families. Our members also joined together in daily activities such as dress up day, service day, and a group favorite, the BYU Hockey Game Day!

2018

The IHH Board delivered a pizza lunch to the cardiology staff at Primary Children's Hospital and the Riverton Primary Children's Clinic as well as heart shaped sugar cookies that were delivered to the CICU staff.  A table with IHH pamphlets and CHD facts were out in the Outpatient Building by the cardiology check in station.  The IHH Board served a meal at the Ronald McDonald Family Room located in Primary Children's Hospital.  We had daily spreading CHD awareness challenges posted on Facebook.  BYU's hockey team hosted a CHD awareness game on February 16th.  They wore special CHD jersey's for this game.

2017 & Previous Years

IHH provided heart shaped pizzas to the cardiology staff at Primary Children's Hospital and treats to the CICU staff.  We collected stuffed animals to give to patients in the CICU throughout the year, and had members sit at a table and share information about CHD's.  We started a Heart on Your Sleeve Campaign to help spread CHD awareness to the public and on social media.We have also had a cardiology symposium.

IHH Cardiology Symposium - Feb 11, 2014