WHO? WHAT? WHY? HOW? WHOM? WHERE? QUESTIONS?
BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN HEART CARE AND EVERYDAY LIFE
A Heart Diagnosis Should Not Mean Losing Your Team.
Medical care can answer what happens to the heart. Young athletes and families still need help navigating what happens next.
Medical care can answer what happens to the heart. Young athletes and families still need help navigating what happens next.
Your Heart, Our Cause is being developed to help young people with heart conditions and their families navigate the nonclinical journey from diagnosis or treatment back into everyday life—home, school, friendships, sports, team connection, identity, and belonging.
Through our Heart-to-Team Continuity Program™, we plan to work alongside healthcare organizations, foundations, schools, teams, and community partners to help make sure the support does not end when the medical appointment does.
The program also includes the Heart-to-Team Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Module™, a nonclinical component designed to help connect cardiac-readiness awareness with communication, continuity planning, team connection, and resource navigation before and after a cardiac-related disruption.
Your Heart, Our Cause is a community initiative in development. Programs described on this website are being developed and are not yet represented as currently available services.
The Medical Journey Is Only Part of the Story.
A diagnosis, procedure, restriction, or change in sports participation can create questions that extend far beyond the exam room.
For the young person:
“What happens to my place on the team?”
“How do I explain this to my friends?”
“What if I can't participate the way I used to?”
“Am I still an athlete?”
For parents:
“What should I tell the coach?”
“How much should the school know?”
“How do I protect my child without making them feel defined by this?”
“How do I help them stay connected?”
For healthcare and community organizations:
“What happens after this family leaves us?”
“Are the people surrounding this young person clear about existing emergency-readiness resources, responsibilities, and communication pathways?”
“What happens after an emergency, diagnosis, restriction, or participation change—when the immediate medical response is over but the young person still has to return to everyday life?”
“Who helps translate the medical change into everyday life?”
“Who helps the family navigate conversations with schools and teams?”
“How do we support identity and belonging without stepping outside our clinical role?”
Some of these needs belong with qualified medical, emergency-response, athletic-training, or cardiac-safety professionals.
Others exist in the space between readiness, medical care, family communication, school, team, and everyday life.
That connective space is where Your Heart, Our Cause is being designed to help.
That is the gap Your Heart, Our Cause is being created to help fill.
OUR FLAGSHIP PROGRAM
The Heart-to-Team Continuity Program™
Helping bridge the journey from diagnosis and treatment to home, school, team, and belonging.
The Heart-to-Team Continuity Program™ is being designed as a structured, nonclinical support program for young people whose heart condition changes, interrupts, or complicates their relationship with sports and everyday life.
It is not intended to replace cardiologists, hospitals, behavioral-health professionals, social workers, schools, or existing family-support organizations.
It is designed to help connect the spaces between them.
The program gives participating organizations a structured way to extend support into the real-life situations young people and families often have to navigate after the medical questions have been addressed.
Diagnosis or Treatment → Home → School → Team → Connection → Belonging
A Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Component
Within the Heart-to-Team Continuity Program™, YHOC is also developing the Heart-to-Team Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Module™.
The module is designed to help connect an organization's existing cardiac-readiness systems with the nonclinical continuity needs that can arise before and after a cardiac event, diagnosis, restriction, or change in participation.
It does not replace an Emergency Action Plan, AED program, CPR/AED training, athletic training services, emergency medical response, clinical care, or sports-clearance decisions.
Its role is to help connect the people, communication, resources, and continuity that surround those systems.
Readiness Awareness → Communication → Continuity Planning → Team Connection → Resource Navigation → Ongoing Support
The goal is to help make sure that preparedness does not stop at the emergency plan—and support does not stop once the immediate medical questions have been answered.
Cardiac readiness helps people prepare for the emergency.
Heart-to-Team Continuity helps make sure the human support does not disappear after the emergency or medical decision.
Together, these elements help create a more connected pathway from readiness and medical care into the young person's everyday life.
Support Should Not End at the Exam-Room Door.
The Heart-to-Team Continuity Program™ is being designed around a managed support journey rather than simply handing a family a brochure or resource packet.
01 — Referral & Introduction
A participating healthcare organization, foundation, or other approved partner introduces an eligible family to Your Heart, Our Cause.
The family chooses whether they would like to participate.
Participation is voluntary.
02 — Understand What Has Changed
YHOC helps the family identify the nonclinical challenges they are navigating.
That may include:
Changes in sports participation.
Communicating with coaches or schools.
Loss of routine or team connection.
Questions about identity and belonging.
Family communication.
Finding appropriate existing resources.
The purpose is not to assess the young person's medical condition.
It is to understand what is changing around them.
03 — Build the Continuity Plan
The family receives practical tools and an individualized path for navigating relevant conversations and next steps.
Depending on the program implementation, this can include:
My Team Connection Plan™
Parent–Coach Conversation Guide™
School and team communication resources.
Family discussion tools.
Question-preparation resources.
Existing community and professional resource navigation.
Strategies for maintaining appropriate connection and belonging when sports participation changes.
04 — Help Connect the People Around the Young Person
When appropriate and authorized by the family, the program can help families think through communication with the adults and organizations surrounding the young person.
The goal is simple:
Help everyone understand how to support the person—not just manage the medical condition.
05 — Follow the Journey
Support should not disappear after one conversation.
Institutional implementations of Heart-to-Team Continuity can include structured follow-up points as families move from diagnosis or treatment back into everyday life.
Depending on the agreement with the participating institution, follow-up may occur during the weeks and months following referral.
06 — Learn and Improve
Participating organizations can receive program-level feedback and outcomes reporting designed to help answer questions such as:
Are families using the resources?
Do parents feel better prepared for conversations?
Are young people finding the support relevant?
Where do families continue to experience gaps?
How can the program be improved?
The goal is not simply to distribute resources.
The goal is to create continuity.
The Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Layer
READY
Help institutions, families, teams, and appropriate stakeholders understand the cardiac-readiness resources and responsibilities already surrounding the young person.
This can include awareness of existing Emergency Action Plans, AED access, designated roles, appropriate contacts, and qualified training or referral resources.
RESPOND
Help establish clear nonclinical communication and continuity pathways for what happens around and immediately following a cardiac-related disruption.
Who communicates with the family?
What does the school or team need to know?
Who helps identify the next nonclinical support step?
How is the young person's privacy respected?
RECONNECT
Help the young person and family navigate the transition back into everyday life through continuity planning, team connection, communication resources, and support around identity and belonging.
This is where tools such as the My Team Connection Plan™ and Parent–Coach Conversation Guide™ become especially relevant.
Medical clearance and activity restrictions remain entirely with qualified healthcare professionals.
ADVOCATE
Help institutions strengthen the connections between existing cardiac-readiness resources, family support, community resources, and continuity practices.
The goal is not to duplicate established cardiac-safety programs.
It is to help make the overall support system easier for families to navigate.
READY → RESPOND → RECONNECT → ADVOCATE
Practical Support for the Life Around the Diagnosis.
Every family will be different.
Some young people may continue participating in sports.
Some may need modifications.
Some may stop participating altogether.
Heart-to-Team Continuity is not built around a predetermined outcome.
It is built around helping the young person remain connected, supported, and understood as their situation evolves.
My Team Connection Plan™
A practical resource designed to help the young person and family think through how they want to remain connected to their team, school, activities, or community when participation changes.
Parent–Coach Conversation Guide™
A structured tool to help parents prepare for conversations with coaches about changes in participation, communication, expectations, and continued inclusion.
Family Support Resources
Practical resources designed around questions, conversations, communication, and navigating changes that happen outside medical care.
School & Team Communication Tools
Resources that can help families communicate what they want appropriate adults to understand without requiring YHOC to make medical recommendations.
Educational Conversations
Opportunities to explore subjects such as identity, belonging, communication, adapting to change, maintaining connection, and navigating uncertainty.
Resource Navigation
When needs fall outside YHOC's role, families can be directed toward appropriate existing medical, behavioral-health, social-work, community, or other professional resources.
Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Resources™
Age-appropriate and family-focused resources designed to help families understand how cardiac readiness, communication, team connection, and continuity fit together.
These resources may help families identify questions to ask, understand who is responsible for different aspects of preparedness and support, and plan how communication should occur if a cardiac-related event, diagnosis, restriction, or participation change affects the young person.
They do not replace Emergency Action Plans, medical instructions, CPR/AED training, or professional emergency guidance.
FOR HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS, FOUNDATIONS & COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Extend Your Support Beyond the Point Where Your Existing Services End.
Your organization may already provide exceptional medical care, family services, social work, behavioral-health resources, education, or community support.
YHOC is not being created to duplicate them.
We are being created to help fill a very specific continuity gap.
A Heart-to-Team Continuity institutional implementation can be designed to include:
A Defined Referral Pathway
A clear process for identifying, introducing, and referring appropriate families without adding unnecessary complexity to existing staff workflows.
Heart-to-Team Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Module™
A structured nonclinical layer that helps connect the organization's existing cardiac-readiness infrastructure with family communication, continuity planning, athlete reconnection, and resource navigation.
Depending on the implementation, this can include readiness check-ins, communication mapping, continuity tools, resource/referral coordination, staff orientation, and program measurement.
YHOC does not replace or certify the institution's clinical protocols, Emergency Action Plan, AED program, CPR/AED training, or emergency-response procedures.
Family Onboarding & Navigation
YHOC manages the nonclinical support journey after an appropriate family elects to participate.
Practical Family Resources
Structured resources addressing team connection, parent–coach communication, family conversations, identity, belonging, and everyday transitions.
Individualized Continuity Planning
Support tailored around the nonclinical circumstances a particular young person and family are navigating.
School & Team Connection Support
Resources that help families navigate appropriate communication and continued connection with schools, coaches, teams, and activities.
Staff Orientation & Training
Education for relevant organizational staff so they understand the program, its boundaries, referral process, and how it complements existing services.
Structured Follow-Up
Rather than a single handoff, institutional programs can incorporate scheduled family follow-up over an agreed period.
Program Measurement & Reporting
Participating organizations can receive aggregated program reporting covering utilization, family engagement, identified gaps, feedback, and opportunities for improvement.
Ongoing Program Development
YHOC can work with participating organizations to continuously refine the program based on actual family needs and institutional feedback.
One Program. Different Points in the Journey.
Four Places Readiness & Continuity Can Matter Most
Before a Cardiac Emergency or Participation Change
Organizations can already have strong emergency systems in place and still benefit from helping staff, families, and teams understand how those systems connect to communication and continuity.
The Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Module™ can help identify where awareness, ownership, communication, or resource connections may need greater clarity—without replacing the professionals responsible for emergency preparedness.
Different organizations encounter young people and families at different moments.
Heart-to-Team Continuity can be adapted to complement those different roles.
At Diagnosis and Ongoing Clinical Care
A cardiology practice or specialty clinic may answer the family's medical questions while YHOC helps support what happens after they leave the exam room.
The focus can include family communication, identity, school and team connection, and navigating changes in participation.
Following Hospitalization or a Major Procedure
Hospitals may help a young person successfully transition from treatment to home.
YHOC can focus on the next transition:
Home → School → Team → Everyday Life
The program can provide structured follow-up during the period when families are adjusting to new routines, restrictions, questions, and expectations.
Through Community and Family-Support Organizations
Foundations and community organizations may already provide valuable family resources, events, education, and connection.
Heart-to-Team Continuity can complement those services with a more structured program specifically focused on the young person's relationship with sports, identity, communication, team connection, and belonging.
We fit into the gap. We do not need to replace what is already working.
Stay in Your Clinical Lane. Let Us Help With What Happens Outside It.
Healthcare professionals should not have to become a young person's coach liaison, school navigator, peer-support coordinator, or ongoing source of every nonclinical conversation.
And families should not have to figure everything out alone.
YHOC is being designed to complement clinical care by focusing on questions such as:
How does the family communicate this change?
How does the young person stay connected?
How can a coach support them appropriately?
What happens to their athletic identity?
What happens when their role changes?
Where should the family turn when another need emerges?
Your team handles the heart.
Heart-to-Team Continuity helps support the life around it.
The Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Module™ extends that principle by helping connect healthcare guidance with the nonclinical people, resources, and communication surrounding the young person.
Clinical decisions, restrictions, testing, treatment, and sports clearance remain with qualified medical professionals.
YHOC helps support what happens around those decisions.
Be Ready for the Emergency. Be Ready for What Comes After It.
Cardiac readiness in youth sports matters.
Schools and teams should have appropriate emergency plans, access to emergency equipment, trained personnel, and clearly defined responsibilities.
But preparedness does not end when the emergency response ends.
A cardiac event, diagnosis, restriction, or participation change can leave coaches, teammates, parents, and the young person wondering what happens next.
Coaches and schools can be extraordinarily important in the life of a young person navigating a heart condition.
But they may not know what to say or what role they should play.
How do you include someone without making assumptions about what they can do?
How do you check in without making them feel different?
How do you communicate with the family appropriately?
How do you preserve someone's sense of belonging when their role changes?
Your Heart, Our Cause is developing educational tools and conversations to help schools, teams, and coaches approach those situations thoughtfully.
The Heart-to-Team Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Module™ is designed to help connect those two sides:
Readiness before and around the event.
Continuity after it.
The goal is not to tell coaches what an athlete medically can or cannot do.
YHOC does not train or certify CPR/AED skills, inspect AEDs, create or approve Emergency Action Plans, provide emergency medical instruction, determine sports eligibility, or certify a school, team, or venue as “cardiac safe.”
Those responsibilities belong with appropriately qualified professionals and organizations.
YHOC focuses on awareness, communication, continuity, reconnection, and resource navigation.
Communication. Connection. Inclusion. Identity. Belonging.
You Should Not Have to Figure Out the Next Chapter Alone.
When your child's medical situation changes, there may suddenly be an entirely new set of conversations to navigate.
What do we tell the coach?
What does the school need to know?
How much does my child want friends to know?
How do I help them stay connected without pushing them?
What happens if returning to sports is not possible?
How do I support who my child is becoming—not just what they have lost?
Your Heart, Our Cause is being built for those conversations.
We cannot tell you what your child should medically do.
We can help create tools, resources, and support around what happens next.
Your child is more than a diagnosis.
And their sense of belonging should not depend on a starting position.
You Do Not Have to Prove You Are Strong to Still Belong.
A heart condition may change what you can do.
It may change how you participate.
It may even change what comes next.
But it does not erase everything that made sports important to you in the first place.
Your teammates.
Your friendships.
Your routines.
Your identity.
Your memories.
Your goals.
Your place.
You can miss competing and still move forward.
You can be frustrated without being ungrateful.
You can find a different role without pretending it is exactly what you wanted.
You can also discover something entirely new.
A heart diagnosis may change how you participate.
It should not automatically erase your place on the team.
A Clear Role Makes Better Support Possible.
Your Heart, Our Cause IS:
A nonclinical cardiac-readiness and continuity partner.
A connector between established emergency-readiness resources and post-event family/team continuity.
A source of readiness-awareness, communication, continuity-planning, reconnection, and resource-navigation tools.
A partner that can complement healthcare, behavioral-health, social-work, school, team, foundation, and community services.
A source of practical communication and connection resources.
A program focused on identity, belonging, transition, and continuity.
Your Heart, Our Cause IS NOT:
A medical provider.
A cardiology practice.
A substitute for a physician.
A mental-health treatment provider.
A cardiac screening provider.
A CPR or AED training/certification organization.
An AED inspection or certification service.
An Emergency Action Plan author or approval authority.
An emergency-response provider.
A clinical protocol developer.
A sports-clearance service.
A source of exercise prescriptions.
An organization that determines whether someone should participate in a sport.
An organization that certifies a school, team, venue, or institution as “cardiac safe.”
A substitute for EMS, athletic trainers, physicians, nurses, or other qualified professionals.
Medical decisions stay with qualified medical professionals.
Emergency preparedness and response remain with the institutions and qualified professionals responsible for them.
Our work begins where many of those decisions meet everyday life.
YHOC's role is to help connect the human continuity around those systems.
Complement What Already Exists. Do Not Duplicate It.
There are already organizations doing important work in pediatric cardiology, heart screening, family support, mental health, education, and advocacy.
That includes organizations focused on cardiac screening, CPR/AED education, emergency preparedness, athletic safety, clinical care, and sudden cardiac arrest prevention.
The Heart-to-Team Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Module™ is intentionally designed to complement—not duplicate—those efforts.
Our model is:
Partner. Refer. Coordinate. Educate. Support.
Not replace.
YHOC does not need to recreate those services.
Our approach is to ask:
Where is there still a gap?
What are families struggling with after existing services have done their job?
What could make the transition from medical care to everyday life more connected?
What resources would healthcare professionals, parents, schools, and coaches actually use?
What safeguards need to be in place?
That means listening first.
Reviewing resources with appropriate professionals.
Starting thoughtfully.
Measuring usefulness.
Changing what does not work.
And building partnerships around actual needs rather than assumptions.
This Is More Than a Toolkit—and More Than Emergency Readiness Alone.
An organization can have an AED.
It can have an Emergency Action Plan.
It can have appropriately trained personnel.
And those things are critically important.
But they do not automatically answer what happens to the young person and family after a cardiac-related disruption.
Who communicates?
Who helps the family navigate school and team relationships?
Who helps preserve connection and belonging?
Who helps the institution understand whether families are falling through a nonclinical continuity gap?
A collection of PDFs can be useful.
But PDFs alone do not create continuity.
The Heart-to-Team Continuity Program™ is being designed as a managed institutional program that can include implementation, family navigation, individualized support, follow-up, staff orientation, resources, measurement, and reporting.
An institutional partner is not simply paying for printed materials.
They are supporting the infrastructure required to help families navigate the space between:
“Here is what the medical situation means.”
and
“Now how do we live with it?”
That distinction is fundamental to the YHOC model.
WHY THIS MISSION IS PERSONAL
I Know What It Feels Like When the Life You Thought You Were Going to Have Suddenly Changes.
A message from Kerry Knoll, Founder of Your Heart, Our Cause
I didn't grow up thinking heart disease would become part of my story.
When I was 10 years old, I got sick with pneumonia and ended up in the emergency room.
The doctor on call that day happened to be a cardiologist.
During what should have been a visit about pneumonia, he heard something no one had ever caught before—a heart murmur.
That discovery ultimately led to the diagnosis of a congenital heart defect: a bicuspid aortic valve.
I was 10 years old.
And I had no idea how much that discovery would eventually change my life.
But the heart diagnosis was only one of the things happening around me.
That same year, my grandmother—who was incredibly close to me and felt like a second mother—passed away from cancer.
Then, just two years later, when I was only 12, my dad died at 37 years old from a rare form of cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma.
I was an only child.
Suddenly, it was just my mom and me.
We loved each other deeply, but we weren't a family with unlimited resources or an enormous support system surrounding us.
My mom was doing the best she could while carrying an incredible amount herself.
And I was a kid trying to process grief, a heart condition, growing up, and everything else life had suddenly put in front of me.
Sports Became One of the Places Where Life Still Felt Normal.
I grew up playing all three major sports—baseball, football, and basketball.
But around the same time my heart condition was discovered, I fell in love with the game of basketball.
And when I say I loved basketball, I mean it became a huge part of who I was.
By the time I was a teenager, basketball wasn't simply something I did.
It became my identity!
It was where I competed.
Where I connected with friends.
Where I felt confident.
Where I escaped.
Where I felt like myself.
Then, at 16 years old, I was told something that changed the way I looked at my future.
Doctors told me that the valve in my heart was leaking and that I would eventually need open-heart surgery to replace it.
I could still play organized basketball at that point, but things were beginning to change.
I was told to be more careful when working out.
Lower the amount of weight I lifted.
Increase the repetitions.
Pay attention.
Be cautious.
For a teenager who thought he was invincible—and whose identity was wrapped tightly around being an athlete—it was difficult to understand what any of that really meant.
I could still play.
So I played.
But there was now a question sitting quietly in the background:
How long will I be able to keep doing this?
At 18, I got the answer I didn't want.
I could no longer get the medical clearance required to play organized college basketball.
Just like that, the basketball career I thought I was going to continue was over.
There wasn't a final game where I knew it was the last one.
There wasn't a senior-night moment where I got to say goodbye.
There wasn't much preparation for what losing that part of my life was going to feel like.
I was simply told that medically, I couldn't continue.
And I was devastated.
Basketball had been one of the biggest pieces of my identity, and suddenly I had to figure out who I was without the version of the game I had built so much of my life around.
The medical answer may have been clear.
The emotional answer wasn't.
That's the part I don't think we talk about enough.
Doctors appropriately focus on the heart.
They focus on what is safe.
What needs to be monitored.
What procedures may be required.
What someone medically can or cannot do.
And those decisions are incredibly important.
But when you're a young athlete, there is another set of questions that can begin the moment you walk out of that office.
What happens to my team?
What happens to my goals?
What am I supposed to tell my friends?
What do I do with all of the fear I don't know how to explain?
Who am I if I can't be the athlete I thought I was going to be?
Those were questions I didn't know how to answer.
From about 16 until I finally had open-heart surgery at 23, I struggled more than most people around me probably realized.
There were periods of depression.
There was fear.
There was uncertainty.
And there were times when thinking about the future was difficult because I didn't know exactly what that future was going to look like.
I knew I would eventually need open-heart surgery.
I knew there was something wrong with my heart.
And in the back of my mind was the fear that something could happen at any time.
At the same time, I wasn't willing to stop living.
I continued working out.
I continued playing basketball recreationally.
Part of that was because I loved it.
And part of it was because basketball was one of the things that made me feel most like myself.
That created its own tension.
I was afraid of what could happen.
But I was also afraid of what life would feel like if I completely gave up something I loved.
At 23 years old, the waiting ended.
I traveled to Missoula, Montana, where I underwent my first open-heart surgery at the Heart Institute of Montana.
I had a Ross procedure.
That surgery was a major chapter in my life.
But looking back, I realize something important:
The surgery wasn't the entire story.
The years before it mattered.
The fear mattered.
Losing organized basketball mattered.
The effect on my identity mattered.
My mother's experience mattered.
The grief we had already carried as a family mattered.
The financial realities mattered.
And trying to navigate all of those things without a roadmap mattered.
That is why Your Heart, Our Cause exists.
I can't go back and give my 16-year-old self the support I wish I had.
I can't sit beside that 18-year-old kid who just learned his organized basketball career was over and tell him:
"Losing the game doesn't mean you've lost your place."
I can't make the fear disappear for the 20-year-old version of myself who wondered what his heart condition meant for his future.
But I can use those experiences to help build something for the young people and families facing those questions today.
Because no young athlete should have to feel like their whole identity disappeared when their participation changed.
No parent should have to watch their child struggle and feel as though they have to figure every part of the transition out alone.
And no family should leave a medical appointment with an answer about the heart but no support for everything that answer changes outside the hospital.
That's the gap I want Your Heart, Our Cause to help fill.
Not by pretending we can eliminate every difficult emotion.
Not by telling young people everything is going to be okay.
Not by encouraging someone to ignore medical restrictions or fight their way back onto the field or court.
And not by replacing cardiologists, mental-health professionals, social workers, athletic trainers, schools, coaches, or other organizations already doing important work.
Our role is to help connect the pieces.
Medical Care → Family → School → Team → Identity → Connection → Belonging
To help a young person understand that even when participation changes, they still matter.
To help parents navigate conversations they may never have expected to have.
To help coaches and schools understand how they can preserve connection without crossing medical boundaries.
And to help healthcare organizations extend support into the part of a young person's life that begins after the medical decision has been made.
A few years ago, something finally became clear to me.
For a long time, I viewed my heart condition as something I simply had to manage.
Something that happened to me.
Something I needed to get through.
Eventually, I began looking at it differently.
I realized that the experiences I had spent much of my life wishing I never had may also have prepared me to serve people walking through something similar.
The diagnosis.
The uncertainty.
The loss.
The fear.
The change in athletic identity.
The open-heart surgery.
The questions about what comes next.
And the experience of trying to navigate all of it as a kid, a teenager, a young adult, and a family without unlimited resources.
I can't give another young person my exact path.
And I don't want to.
Every heart condition is different.
Every medical situation is different.
Every family is different.
Every athlete's future is different.
But I can make sure they don't have to navigate that change feeling as alone as I did.
That's what I believe I'm being called to do.
And that's why I'm prepared to take everything my family and I went through and turn it into something that can serve somebody else.
For the young athlete wondering who they are now.
For the parent trying desperately to say the right thing.
For the coach who wants to help but doesn't know how.
For the healthcare professional who knows there are parts of this journey that extend beyond the clinical setting.
And for the institutions, sponsors, donors, and community partners who believe these families deserve a more connected system of support.
Your Heart, Our Cause is deeply personal to me.
But the organization isn't being built around my story.
It's being built so the next young person's story can include something mine often didn't:
A clearer path forward—and people to walk it with them.
A Heart Diagnosis Should Not Mean Losing Your Team.
Kerry Knoll
Founder
Your Heart, Our Cause
I Know There Is More to a Heart Condition Than What Happens in a Hospital.
A message from Kerry Knoll, Founder of Your Heart, Our Cause
I was diagnosed with a heart condition as a child, and sports—especially basketball—became an important part of my life and identity.
My own journey has included heart procedures, uncertainty, limitations, questions, and finding ways to keep moving forward.
But Your Heart, Our Cause is not being built because I believe someone else should follow my path.
Every heart condition is different.
Every family is different.
Every young person's future is different.
What stayed with me was the importance of having something meaningful in your life and what it can feel like when a medical condition threatens your connection to it.
That is why I keep coming back to one question:
What happens to the young person after the medical questions have been answered?
Who helps with the coach conversation?
Who helps the family think through school?
Who recognizes the identity change?
Who thinks about belonging?
Who helps connect the different parts of the young person's life?
That is the role I want Your Heart, Our Cause to help fill.
Not by replacing the professionals and organizations already helping families.
But by connecting the spaces between them.
A Heart Diagnosis Should Not Mean Losing Your Team.
Kerry Knoll
Founder
Your Heart, Our Cause
FOR HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS, FOUNDATIONS & COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Could Heart-to-Team Continuity Fill a Gap for the Families You Serve?
Could Heart-to-Team Continuity Fill a Gap for the Families You Serve?
How your organization currently approaches cardiac readiness.
Whether the transition from cardiac readiness or medical response into family/team continuity creates a gap.
Whether the Heart-to-Team Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Module™ could complement your existing Emergency Action Plans, AED program, staff training, clinical services, or community partnerships without duplicating them.
We are currently developing the Heart-to-Team Continuity Program™ and seeking conversations with organizations that serve young people with heart conditions and their families.
The first conversation is not a sales presentation.
We want to understand:
Where families currently receive support.
Where your existing services end.
Where you continue to see unmet needs.
Whether athlete identity and team connection are meaningful gaps.
What safeguards would be required.
What your organization would need to see before considering a pilot or program.
And whether Heart-to-Team Continuity could add meaningful value without duplicating services you already provide.
Help Us Build This Around What Families Actually Need.
If you are a parent, guardian, young adult, or someone who has experienced a heart condition while participating in sports, your perspective matters.
We are developing this program to address real-life needs—not assumptions about what families need.
Join the YHOC interest list to receive updates and opportunities to provide feedback as the program develops.
No medical records are required.
Joining the list does not enroll you in a program.
Questions?
Is Your Heart, Our Cause already an established nonprofit?
Not yet.
Your Heart, Our Cause is currently a community initiative in development, with plans to establish a nonprofit organization.
We are not currently recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.
What is the Heart-to-Team Continuity Program™?
It is YHOC's planned flagship nonclinical support program for young people and families navigating the effects a heart condition can have on sports participation, school, communication, identity, team connection, and belonging.
The program is being designed for implementation in partnership with healthcare organizations, foundations, and other appropriate community organizations.
Is this a medical program?
No.
YHOC would not diagnose conditions, interpret medical information, prescribe activity, recommend exercise, provide sports clearance, or make medical decisions.
Medical decisions remain between the young person, family, and qualified healthcare professionals.
Does YHOC provide mental-health treatment?
No.
Identity, loss, uncertainty, and belonging may be discussed as part of nonclinical support, but YHOC is not a substitute for licensed behavioral-health care.
When professional support is appropriate, families should be connected with qualified resources.
Does the program encourage children to return to sports?
No.
There is no predetermined athletic outcome.
For one young person, moving forward may involve continued participation.
For another, participation may be modified.
For another, competitive sports may no longer be appropriate.
Those decisions belong with the healthcare team.
YHOC's role is to help support the person through what happens around those decisions.
Why wouldn't the hospital or cardiologist simply provide this support?
Many healthcare organizations already provide extensive support.
YHOC is specifically designed to complement—not replace—those services.
A healthcare team may appropriately focus on diagnosis, treatment, safety, and medical management.
Heart-to-Team Continuity focuses on the nonclinical transition back into everyday environments such as home, school, activities, and teams.
Can schools and coaches participate?
That is part of the planned model.
With appropriate family involvement and authorization, resources can help families navigate communication and connection with schools and teams.
YHOC would not provide medical instructions to coaches or schools.
Can an organization sponsor the program?
We are exploring institutional funding, program underwriting, philanthropic support, and mission-aligned partnerships as part of the long-term sustainability model.
Organizations interested in helping establish or support Heart-to-Team Continuity are encouraged to contact us.
What is the Heart-to-Team Cardiac Readiness & Continuity Module™?
It is a nonclinical component within the Heart-to-Team Continuity Program™ designed to connect cardiac-readiness awareness with communication, continuity planning, family/team support, reconnection, and resource navigation.
Its purpose is to complement the emergency, clinical, and safety systems already surrounding a young person—not replace them.
Does YHOC provide CPR/AED training or emergency planning?
No.
YHOC does not provide or certify CPR/AED training, inspect or certify AEDs, create or approve Emergency Action Plans, provide emergency medical instruction, or certify an organization as cardiac safe.
Those functions should be handled by appropriately qualified professionals and organizations.
YHOC focuses on the nonclinical awareness, communication, continuity, and support surrounding those systems.
Does Cardiac Readiness mean YHOC determines whether an athlete is safe to participate?
No.
YHOC does not screen athletes, interpret medical tests, determine activity restrictions, provide sports clearance, or decide whether participation is medically appropriate.
Those decisions remain entirely with the athlete's qualified healthcare professionals.
YHOC helps support the communication, connection, identity, and continuity issues that may arise around those decisions.
FOR HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS, FOUNDATIONS & COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Being Ready for the Emergency Should Not Be the End of the Plan.
A school or team may know what to do during a cardiac emergency.
A cardiologist may determine what happens medically next.
A family may leave the hospital with treatment instructions.
But everyday life is still waiting.
School.
Friends.
Coaches.
Teammates.
Identity.
Belonging.
Heart-to-Team Continuity is being built to help connect those pieces—from readiness awareness through reconnection and continuity.
Who helps connect those pieces?
Through the Heart-to-Team Continuity Program™, that is exactly what we are working to build.
For Organizations:
For Families:
Your Heart, Our Cause
A Heart Diagnosis Should Not Mean Losing Your Team.
Developing nonclinical continuity support for young people with heart conditions and the families, healthcare organizations, schools, teams, and communities surrounding them.
Organizational Status
Your Heart, Our Cause is a community initiative in development, with plans to establish a nonprofit organization. We are not currently recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. We do not represent financial contributions to this initiative as tax-deductible charitable donations.
Program & Medical Notice
Programs described on this website are in development unless explicitly identified as currently available. Your Heart, Our Cause is intended to provide nonclinical support, practical resources, navigation, and general education. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, mental-health treatment, sports clearance, exercise recommendations, or emergency services. YHOC does not provide cardiac screening, CPR/AED certification, emergency medical training, AED inspection or certification, Emergency Action Plan development or approval, clinical protocols, or certification that a school, team, venue, or organization is “cardiac safe.” Medical and activity decisions should be made with appropriately qualified healthcare professionals. Emergency preparedness, response procedures, equipment oversight, and training remain the responsibility of the applicable institution and appropriately qualified professionals.
Copyright © 2026 Your Heart, Our Cause, is a community initiative in development—not currently an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) organization. We do not represent contributions as tax-deductible charitable donations. All Rights Reserved.