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PDHeart
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PDHeart, founded in 1995,
is a very active online support group and discussion forum for parents, family
members and adults with congenital heart defects. If you have a
child with CHD, if you have CHD yourself, or if you are a concerned
individual, please join us!
Our online support groups are one of the benefits of membership in The
Congenital Heart Information Network. If you are not yet a member,
click here for
more information.
It is customary for new
PDHeart list subscribers to introduce themselves to the
rest of the list. If you are new to the group, please consider
sending a brief message introducing yourself and your family to the
list, filling everyone in on your connection to CHD.
The History of PDHeart
In March 1995, Dr. Jim Revkin
(currently Cardiology Director, Waterbury Hospital Health Center in
Waterbury, CT and a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Yale
University School of Medicine) set up a manually operated mailing
list, called "Heart," on his computer. He did this to provide a
forum for people to exchange ideas on cardiac disease.
By December 1995, it was evident that many of the
participants on the Heart list list were particularly interested in
CHD, so Jim created a new list for CHD discussion. PDHeart ("PD" is
ostensibly short for "pediatric") was born!
Initially, the PDHeart list had 30 subscribers. By July 1996, the PDHeart list
had grown to about 100 members. The Yale University School of
Medicine started up a mailing list server at that time and the
PDHeart list moved there, becoming automated. The list continued to
grow and was quite busy.
Early in 1997, the powers that be at Yale noticed
that the PDHeart list generated about 20% of all
e-mail traffic on the server. They suggested to Jim that a new home
for the list would be nice.
In March 1997, Peter Littlefield (a subscriber and parent of
a child with CHD) approached one of his local
Internet service provider, Magma Communications Ltd., about hosting
the PDHeart list on their server, which provided
better error management and a digest format. When Magma agreed to
host the PDHeart list free of charge, Peter Littlefield set up the
new list with the help of Magma and Yale. At that time, there were
148 list members.
The PDHeart web site was started shortly
after the list moved to Magma. A list member had collected about 30
introductions and placed them on a web
site. Those stories were the foundation for the Cardiac Kids web
site, opened in March 1997.
In March 1999, ownership and management of PDHeart
was transferred to The Congenital Heart Information Network
(C.H.I.N.) and the list was transferred to the C.H.I.N. server.
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