Gina White, a woman from Wisconsin, makes baby hats to spread awareness of heart disease.
White started Hats for Hearts after losing her brother to heart disease. It is a new initiative from the organization, Two Hearts Project.
The initiative started only as a goal established by Gina last year. She wanted to create hundreds of handmade baby hats. Aside from making them from scratch, she wanted to send them out to facilities across the country.
Coping with grief through crafts
Because of grief, Gina wanted to focus her energy on other things. She said, "So, I began crocheting and knitting."
Since she started creating handmade baby hats last December, Gina has been making hundreds of them every month. She said, "I've been averaging about a hundred a month or so."
However, finding the facilities to send them to was another thing. It was quite difficult to look for Gina to look for a place that will accept them as donations.
Where to donate the handmade hats
Just so all the handmade baby hats will be distributed, Gina and her husband had to send out emails to different states across the country. She said, "I probably sent at least [a] hundred or so emails. I sent them to hospitals and pregnancy resource centers."
Out of all the places that she sent emails, she only received replies from facilities in eleven states. However, she was lucky to come across March of Dimes, an organization providing military baby showers.
Baby hats for military families
According to Gina, March of Dimes is conducting a huge military baby shower every year. Luckily, the handmade baby hats will be part of the baby shower of the organization this year.
Through the help of March of Dimes, Gina will be able to achieve her goal. She said, "They'll send them out to military families across the country." According to WSAW-TV, Gina has already made 540 hats, and all of these are ready to ship to March of Dimes.
Heart disease rates in the United States
According to the CDC, one person is recorded to die every thirty-six seconds in the United States due to heart disease.
Every year, about 655,000 Americans are recorded to die due to this disease. That is about one in every four deaths recorded. It is also believed to be the leading cause of death in the US.
Aside from heart disease, other medical conditions can put a person at more risk. Such conditions include obesity, physical inactivity, an unhealthy diet, diabetes, and even excessive alcohol use.
In 2016, around 7,000 children (18 years old and below) experienced cardiac arrest outside the hospital. According to heart.org, around 40,000 babies are expected to be affected by congenital cardiovascular defects.
