Avril Goffredo:
Heart and Stroke Foundation really focuses on three key areas: preventing disease, saving lives and promoting recovery. Every seven minutes someone in Canada lose their lives from heart disease and stroke, and we want to actually prevent that, so that people can have more moments with the special people in their lives.

Bailey B:
I didn’t really have a time where I knew about my diagnosis. I was always just so used to going to the doctor, going to the cardiologist, having all those echoes. It was always just the normal for me.

Avril Goffredo:
One in four Canadians will lose their lives from heart disease and stroke. I’ve never met anybody who doesn’t know somebody who hasn’t been affected by one of these diseases.

Bailey B:
I try not to be fearful of the future. I have a few concerns, mostly having had a heart surgery. The second one didn’t go very nicely. And then the next is, when I have kids, I don’t know if my having the disease will then lead to my kids having these defects, and that is something I think about.

Avril Goffredo:
One of the areas that we’ve been focusing on right now is actually the area of healthy eating, and helping to make our food supply healthier for Canadians, and helping to give particularly children a healthier start to life.

Bailey B:
My fourth defect was being born with a bicuspid aortic valve. Those with bicuspid valves tend to get aortic valve disease in their forties or early fifties.

It’s a pill to swallow, but I’m actually a research student in a Heart and Stroke-funded lab, and doing my research project, I am learning more and more about my conditions.

Trying to play a positive, stay positive and hopefully my lab will come up with some solution before I have to go for surgery again.

Avril Goffredo:
With the money that we receive, the heart and stroke foundation funds life-saving research that has a really significant impact on the lives of Canadians. We fund over $32 million in life-saving research every year, and that funds over eight hundred researchers here in Canada.

Bailey B:
If I hadn’t been part of Heart and Stroke, I would definitely not be where I am today. Heart and Stroke definitely celebrated my condition, which I had not done before. I was empowered, I became a better speaker. I wouldn’t be doing a master’s, and I don’t know where I’d be .

Avril Goffredo:
Working with Federated Health Charities allows us to work in collaboration with so many other organisations, but also plays a role in helping to get these important messages out to others.

Eighty percent of heart disease and stroke is actually preventable, and so by being able to actually create awareness of our causes, it also can help prevent the disease as well.

Bailey B:
I’m sure if you really think about it, you know someone who’s been affected by heart disease an d stroke. That’s why Heart and Stroke is such an important organisation, because they aim to save lives, they aim to create survivors, and ultimately prevent disease from happening in the first place.

So I urge anybody who is considering donating money anywhere, to please donate it to Heart and Stroke; it’s an amazing organisation and does so many incredible things.