Children's HeartLink

Leadership and Growth. In FY2023, the Programs Team increased in size from seven to ten, building local leadership by hiring an India-based Partnership Manager, supporting travel and partner education with a full-time International Programs Assistant, and supporting the blended learning model with a Senior Director, Programs. New partner hospitals in Recife, Brazil and Dhaka, Bangladesh were added, along with two new volunteer teams (Texas and Leeds). Three new partners matched with three volunteers (two new to CHL) were identified to be added in FY2024. We conducted an assessment for potential partnerships in Africa and identified 3 potential new partners, as well as began developing a programmatic and fundraising strategies. Programming. Travel resumed, with a total of 14 in-person visits, approaching pre-pandemic levels. Relationships were renewed and CHL's new learning plan process was deployed, with 89% of CHL partner hospitals making progress towards becoming a CoE as planned.Innovation. CHL completed our pilot of the blended model and HeartLink Hub, with the successful execution of the Nurse Residency Program, including demonstrated partner and volunteer satisfaction and strong program use, as well as meaningful knowledge and practice change among nurses. CHL advanced significantly in using CoEs to train current partners in both one-on-one mentorship and more isolated clinical training opportunities. We secured grant funding to develop a CHL Extended Reality (XR) strategy to further develop our blended model and remote demonstration-based learning opportunities.Accountability, Evaluation and Learning. The Program Team acheived 100% grant spenddown on 90% of grants. Evaluation has been integrated into educational offerings for accountability and learning. CHL developed and is utilizing an enhanced system to collect and analyze activities, outputs and outcomes. A total of 4,222 clinicians were trained across 232 training sessions. More than 131 unique volunteers provided $541,290 in donated time. In sum, CHL's 20 partners performed more than 12,400 surgeries and helped more than 165,000 children.

Advocacy AccomplishmentsOur global advocacy efforts this year grew by - adding one new staff member- starting a new advocacy partnership with the Global Alliance for Rheumatic and Congential Hearts- through engagement in the birth defects community, we were able to connect with the WHO Maternal and Child Health department and establish a relationship and successfully advocate for inclusion of CHD in upcoming guidelines publication. - we did 12 presentations at international meetings, 3 new publications and participation in several global meetings and consultations on health topics represening the needs of children with heart disease, and organized several webinars- published an advocacy toolkit- led the advocacy activities for the World Congress and developed the Call to Action

Outreach AccomplishmentsWe continued to expand our efforts to engage existing and new partners and supporters. We issued regular newsletters to supporters, partners and volunteers. We continued leveraging our website with monthly blogs and the addition of an advocacy webpage as well as continued membership in global health working groups/organizations. We also partnered with an agency to support our Google Ad Grant, marketing email tactics and social media initiatives. Additionally, we continued to host webinars for advocacy and education opportunities for health care professionals in low- to middle-income countries.