Congenital heart defects impact 2 million Americans with another 40,000 babies born each year. 8,000 of those babies will die in the first year of life. Several thousand more children and young adults will die from their CHD.

The American Heart Association only provides 1% of funding to CHD, and that 1% includes "trickle-down" research meant for adult onset heart disease that may or may not be extensible for children with heart defects. Despite this terrible lack of funding, the AHA uses children and young women with CHD in much of their advertising, and exclusively in their 32,000 school Jump Rope for Heart program.

We feel this is deceptive because the children profiled for Jump Rope for Heart are not directly helped by this program. The AHA can and should do better.