Congenital Heart Public Health Consortium

Mission 

The mission of the CHPHC is to prevent congenital heart defects and improve outcomes for affected children and adults. The Consortium achieves its mission by:

• Providing leadership and a unified voice for public health priorities
• Expanding opportunities for surveillance and public health research
• Informing public policy priorities that benefit public health and affected persons 

Purpose 

With 2.4 million people currently living with CHDs in the United States, there is a widespread impact on communities and families. Collectively, CHDs are considered to be the most common type of birth defect, affecting approximately 1 in 110, or 40,000, babies each year, and are a leading cause of birth-defect related deaths worldwide. By working together and leveraging the knowledge and expertise of the many CHD stakeholders, the CHPHC is able to make progress toward improving the lives of these children, adults and families and the communities where they live through the following objectives: 

• Raise awareness of CHDs and their comorbidities
• Demonstrate the prevalence of CHDs
• Demonstrate the immediate and lifelong health impacts of CHDs
• Synthesize the public health approach for CHDs
• Appraise the health care access and cost challenges related to CHDs 

The Congenital Health Public Health Consortium (CHPHC) is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The outputs of the CHPHC are solely the responsibility of the CHPHC and do not necessarily represent the official views of, or an endorsement by, the member organizations of the CHPHC, CDC/HHS, or the U.S. Government.