NJ has heart! Hundreds show for ACHA tri-state walk

The crowd started to gather around 9:30 at Boyd Park in New Brunswick as the Adult Congenital Heart Association Tri-State Walk took off.

Since congenital heart disease impacts one in one hundred individuals, it was called the Tri-State All For 1 in 100.

There were 20 teams and 125 walkers who so far have raised over $41,017 dollars. with the top four fundraising teams being Team Stacy and Jill, Team Life after Fonton, Team Potters Posse, and Team Ellen's wonder women and superfriends who walked in costume.

We should also mention the top four individual fundraisers were Mathew Martinho, Helen Goldstein, Marissa Mendosa, and Lindsey Potter.

I was fortunate enough to host this event and hear the stories of those who were walking for loved ones both here and gone. It's events like these that are created to empower all who were born with a heart defect, their loved ones, and the medical communities around them. If you feel like there's nothing you can do, this is something you can do.

ACHA empowers adults to take an active role in their cardiac care. They educate parents on the lifelong specialized care their young child will need in the future and the young adults through the transition to adult CHD care.

ACHA is also there for the person with a newly diagnosed heart defect as well as the patient who's seen it all and everything in between.

ACHA has continued to be the go-to resource for the CHD community, They have over 7,000 views on their webinars and millions reached through their website and social media.

As a heart patient who has had two successful ablations and a history of heart disease in his family, I cheer for those who helped make these walks a success.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Steve Trevelise only. Follow him on Twitter @realstevetrev.

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