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What is the CHAMPION Study?

At the moment, the NHS mainly monitors the quality of services for congenital heart disease (CHD) by checking and reporting on survival rates 30 days after surgery for CHD in children. Survival rates are really high and we know that there are many other things that reflect the quality of services.

The CHAMPION study has been commissioned by the NHS to develop new ways for measuring the quality of services for congenital heart disease services for both children and adults. This includes developing fair ways of measuring survival after surgery in adults and also developing ways of reporting longer term outcomes for people treated for CHD.

We believe it is crucial to try to measure what people living with CHD and their families think is most important to them. In this online forum, we hope to hear about your views on what should be measured and reported about the quality of CHD services.

Who are we?

Three charities (Little Hearts Matter, the Children’s Heart Federation (CHF) and the Somerville Foundation) are helping to run online forums to help us understand patient and family perspectives as part of the study. The research team are based at University College London with collaborators at Great Ormond Street Hospital, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, University Hospitals Bristol, Leeds Teaching Hospital, Magdi Yacoub Institute, Barts Health NHS Trust, Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust and Newcastle University.

How do I get involved?

CHF will be running a private discussion group on Facebook asking a series of questions over a few weeks about the quality of health services for congenital heart disease. We are interested to hear from young adults with CHD, or parents, siblings, relatives or friends involved in the care of children with CHD.

If you would like to join the discussion forum you will need to have a Facebook account. When you request to join the discussion forum you will be asked to give some basic information about yourself (your age, sex, region and role e.g. patient, parent, relative, sibling, friend) to help us understand better what people are telling us. You will then be given access to the group and can begin posting in the discussion. There will be some specific questions posted for everyone to respond to but we would also be interested in just hearing any stories about your care that you would like to share.

The Facebook forum is private, voluntary, and you can choose to participate or leave at any time. Your experiences and comments will only be visible to other members of the group and the forum moderators for the Children’s Heart Federation. All names will be removed from discussion posts before being sent to the researchers, who will not have any access to any identifiable information about you (name, date of birth etc.).

The private Facebook discussion group is open now! click the link above to join the Facebook Group.

How can I find out more?
If you would like to find out more about the study you can download the detailed study information sheet: or email champion@chfed.org.uk