
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.
A diagnosis, procedure, restriction, or change in sports participation can create questions that extend far beyond the exam room.
“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?”
“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?”
“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.
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
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.
Together, these elements help create a more connected pathway from readiness and medical care into the young person's everyday life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
A structured tool to help parents prepare for conversations with coaches about changes in participation, communication, expectations, and continued inclusion.
Practical resources designed around questions, conversations, communication, and navigating changes that happen outside medical care.
Resources that can help families communicate what they want appropriate adults to understand without requiring YHOC to make medical recommendations.
Opportunities to explore subjects such as identity, belonging, communication, adapting to change, maintaining connection, and navigating uncertainty.
When needs fall outside YHOC's role, families can be directed toward appropriate existing medical, behavioral-health, social-work, community, or other professional 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.
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.
A Heart-to-Team Continuity institutional implementation can be designed to include:
A clear process for identifying, introducing, and referring appropriate families without adding unnecessary complexity to existing staff workflows.
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.
YHOC manages the nonclinical support journey after an appropriate family elects to participate.
Structured resources addressing team connection, parent–coach communication, family conversations, identity, belonging, and everyday transitions.
Support tailored around the nonclinical circumstances a particular young person and family are navigating.
Resources that help families navigate appropriate communication and continued connection with schools, coaches, teams, and activities.
Education for relevant organizational staff so they understand the program, its boundaries, referral process, and how it complements existing services.
Rather than a single handoff, institutional programs can incorporate scheduled family follow-up over an agreed period.
Participating organizations can receive aggregated program reporting covering utilization, family engagement, identified gaps, feedback, and opportunities for improvement.
YHOC can work with participating organizations to continuously refine the program based on actual family needs and institutional feedback.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Our work begins where many of those decisions meet everyday life.
YHOC's role is to help connect the human continuity around those systems.
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.
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.
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:
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Through the Heart-to-Team Continuity Program™, that is exactly what we are working to build.
For Organizations:
For Families:
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.
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.
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.