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.
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?”
“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?”
These questions do not always require another medical service.
But they do require somewhere to go.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Defined Referral Pathway
A clear process for identifying, introducing, and referring appropriate families without adding unnecessary complexity to existing staff workflows.
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.
A Young Athlete Can Lose Playing Time Without Losing Their Place.
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 goal is not to tell coaches what an athlete medically can or cannot do.
That decision belongs with the young person's healthcare team.
Our focus is what happens around that decision:
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 support initiative.
A bridge between medical care and everyday life.
A resource for young people and families navigating changes related to sports participation.
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 screening organization.
A substitute for a physician.
A mental-health treatment provider.
A sports-clearance service.
A source of exercise prescriptions.
An organization that determines whether someone should participate in a sport.
Medical decisions stay with qualified medical professionals.
Our work begins where many of those decisions meet everyday life.
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.
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.
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 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?
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.
FOR HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS, FOUNDATIONS & COMMUNITY PARTNERS
The Medical Answer Should Not Be the End of the Support.
A young person may leave the cardiologist's office with an answer about their heart.
A family may leave the hospital knowing what medically comes next.
But everyday life is waiting outside those doors.
School.
Friends.
Coaches.
Teammates.
Identity.
Belonging.
The question Your Heart, Our Cause exists to address is:
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. Medical and activity decisions should be made with appropriately qualified healthcare 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.