December 16, 2025
Top 9 Children’s HeartLink Stories of Impact 2025
2025 marked another year of accomplishments for Children’s HeartLink! These nine stories demonstrate what supporters and donors like you make possible with continued support of our work. Stay up-to-date on the progress being made throughout the year by signing up for our monthly newsletter below.
The Power of Partnerships
These four stories highlight innovations, measurable impact and continued collaborations across the many partnerships at the heart of our work.
XR Pilot Program
In 2025, led by Children’s HeartLink Center of Excellence (CoE) Amrita Institute for Medical Sciences, we explored whether extended reality (XR) can revolutionize heart care training. XR is a cutting-edge technology that allows clinicians to learn and interact with each other in an immersive, 3D environment that has the potential to transform the way they learn and practice.
We brought together surgeons and cardiologists from around the world using XR to discuss real patient cases, build treatment plans and share expertise in order to save the lives of children with heart disease.
Through discussions of 11 complex pediatric heart care cases, doctors gained confidence, improved understanding and saw real-world results.
This project shows what’s possible when technology meets collaboration with Children’s HeartLink CoEs leading the way.
Children’s HeartLink is the Beating Heart of Global Care
We were honored to be featured in Edina Magazine this year. The article highlights how our partnerships, training programs and long-term investments are transforming pediatric heart care for children around the world.
International Collaboration is Saving Children’s Hearts in Brazil
A 2025 study published in the Brazilian Journal of Cardiovascular Surgery shows that Children’s HeartLink’s partnership with Instituto do Coração (InCor) in São Paulo and The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto is saving lives. During this partnership, InCor implemented structured Quality and Safety initiatives, leading to striking improvements. For example, the mortality rate for pediatric heart surgeries dropped from 7.5% to 5.1% before reaching 3.1% by 2024.
Children’s HeartLink partnerships are not quick fixes—they are long-term collaborations focused on hands-on training, multidisciplinary teamwork, building sustainable systems and empowering local professionals to improve care for generations to come.
Making Lifesaving Collaborations Possible
When no one in Bangladesh could perform a rare, lifesaving surgery for a child with a serious airway obstruction, help came from Vietnam!
Dr. Truong from our partner at Vietnam, National Children’s Hospital (NCH) in Hanoi, is one of the few in the region with the needed expertise. Children’s HeartLink facilitated his visit to our partner National Heart Foundation of Bangladesh (NFH), where he successfully performed a tracheoplasty with the local team. He also trained NFH’s ICU staff, joined case discussions and delivered a lecture on tracheal repair outcomes.
Accompanying him were a perfusionist and junior surgeon, who were able to gain perspective on operative practices in another country.
This partnership highlights the strength of our sustainable training model, with hospital partners becoming regional trainers and helping save lives beyond their borders.
When you support Children’s HeartLink,
you make sustainable training opportunities like these possible.
Strides in Advocacy
To support on-the-ground partnerships, Children’s HeartLink advocates for systemic changes to pediatric heart care on a national and global scale. These three stories highlight big strides we made in 2025 towards this goal.
Consultation with the WHO
Bistra Zheleva, vice president of global strategy and advocacy at Children’s HeartLink, contributed her expertise to a critical World Health Organization (WHO) consultation that will help shape birth defects care worldwide.
This WHO consultation aims to create comprehensive frameworks and actionable recommendations for governments, specifically in low- and middle-income countries, to establish sustainable birth defects screening, diagnosis, management and long-term care programs.
Read more about the WHO Consultation
Did you know? Children’s HeartLink is one of the few organizations leading this effort to revolutionize pediatric heart care globally. This is the important work that you, our supporters, are helping to bring to life.
Working Towards a WHA Resolution
This May, Children’s HeartLink participated in the World Health Assembly in Geneva, advocating for global action on pediatric and congenital heart diseases and advancing a new WHA Resolution with Global ARCH.
In November 2025, a peer-reviewed editorial in JACC, contributed to by Zheleva, highlighted global inequities in pediatric cardiac care and reinforced the need for advocacy, policy reform, workforce development, and equitable access.
In December, several Children’s HeartLink staff and partners attended the 9th World Congress for Pediatric and Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery. We shaped Track 18, The Call to Action: Global Health and Congenital Heart Disease, presenting real-world evidence in support for the WHA resolution.
Join the Global Coalition for Pediatric and Congenital Hearts
Bangladesh Stakeholders Meeting
In August, Children’s HeartLink in partnership with the Directorate General of Medical Education for The People’s Republican of Bangladesh and the National Heart Foundation and Research Institute organized the first ever National Stakeholders Meeting on Pediatric Cardiac Care in Bangladesh.
This meeting brought together government leaders, medical universities, hospitals, professional societies and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) partners in pediatric cardiac care across Bangladesh as a first step in developing a national congenital heart disease strategy to expand workforce capacity, improve access to care, and save the lives of thousands of children.
This meeting illustrates how Children’s HeartLink’s advocacy work is essential for inspiring systemic healthcare changes, ensuring on-the-ground staff training is supported by national policies that create the necessary infrastructure for stronger, more resilient healthcare systems.
When you support Children’s HeartLink,
you make sustainable training opportunities like these possible.
Featuring the People Who Make It Possible
None of our work is possible without the passion and dedication of medical volunteers and pediatric heart teams teams at partner sites. Their devotion to training and learning are unparalleled and have saved the lives of thousands of children. The two people featured below represent the long-term impact of individuals can have.
