ISUOG President, Prof. Reem S Abu Rustum, shares an important message on Every Little Heart Matters during Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Month 2026.
Dear friends and colleagues,
February is Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Month and we are most excited to share with you our plans aligning with our Every Little Heart Matters (ELHM) initiative for ISUOG IMPACT.
Inclusion: This initiative has truly united all of us and brought us together with heart. All over our social media, we have our ambassadors and various members pledging their commitments and planning educational activities.
Modernisation: Our committees and sub-committees have been most innovative in creating new educational content for ELHM that will be freely available to all. For the awareness month, the NGen Committee have created weekly “heart bites” and our VISUOG team is publishing weekly case challenges in a format that is proving popular on our social channels. All our committees and volunteers have been very generous with their time in helping us to create a wealth of highly respected content and resources. New educational content is being put together in addition to what is already available on our ELHM webpage. In addition to the virtual issue of the UOG journal, released in September 2025, our UOG team is putting together a special print edition which includes new research and many “how to” articles.
People: We have always been propelled by the collective passion and expertise we have. The spark starts in our office with our staff, and spreads across the world with each and every one of you. It has been truly remarkable to see how everyone is taking on extra tasks relating to ELHM with such dedication and commitment to our global cause.
Advocacy: With ELHM, one of our priorities is to amplify our patients’ voices. We have interviews and a podcast that resonate deeply with all of us and we welcome it if you can connect us with patients who are willing to share their stories.
Certification: Stay tuned for updates from our Education Team.
Teaching: high-quality training and knowledge sharing remains at the crux of ELHM. Coming this May, we have an outstanding hybrid course planned in Seville and we hope you can join us.
My heartfelt gratitude to each and everyone of our staff and volunteers. We are hoping that together, we may have maximum IMPACT in our fight to improve the prenatal detection of congenital heart defects and the outcome for our littlest patients.
Sincerely yours,
Reem S. Abu-Rustum