A group for people who are patients at Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute who have implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD's).  Their families are also welcome.  The group meets every 3rd month in the afternoon.  For more information: for the Charlotte group call a leader at 704/373-0212 (ask for Terri Cooper) Monday, Thursday, or Friday from 9 a.m. to 5p.m., or for the Shelby group, call a leader at 704/482-1006 (ask for Amanda Sowell) Monday through Thursday from 9-5.  (Click for overview of Heart Disease resources)

An enthusiastic group for children with any congenital heart disease and their families.  The group has monthly meetings, parent-to-parent contact, celebrations, and other events.  They provide mutual emotional support, special speakers, care packages for children in the hospital, access to professional literature, and anything else that might help parents and children cope and thrive. For more information, click here to see their web site or call a leader of the group at 704/726-3493. (Click for overview of Heart Disease resources)

A now dormant professionally-facilitated group for adults and their families who are affected by any form of congestive heart failure.  For more information about when this group may re-start, call a leader of the group at Presbyterian Hospital's Heart Program at 384-7292 any day any time.  (Click for overview of Heart Disease resources(

Caring Hearts (structured educational group about heart disease) (1997)  (1418, 730)
Heart Bypass Surgery Group (1999)(1461) 
The Lightning Bolts (2009)  1599

This service provides comprehensive data and referral assistance for nonprofit and government resources in the NC counties of Mecklenburg, Cabarrus, Union, and Anson counties and in or near the city of Mooresville, NC.  If you are calling on a landline or residential phone in one of those counties, dial 2-1-1.  If that fails, if you are calling on a cell phone, or if you are calling from anywhere else in NC, call 866/744-7778.  For calls from out of NC, use their local number of 704/377-1100. Although they are open 24 hours a day, you may wish to call weekdays from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. for non-emergency questions.

The friendly staff at this full service library can help you research any medical topic using their up-to-date computers, databases, journals and books.  No previous research experience or medical knowledge is required. Click here for details or call them at 704-384-6393.

MedLinePlus

This service of the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health is one of the better one-stop shops for beginning your search on the internet for medical information.  For those of you who live in Mecklenburg and Union counties in NC, we recommend that you contact the Health Library for more personal assistance from the experts there in searching for reliable medical information. Click here for their details.

Click to link to any of these lists of national groups: 

The Self-Help Sourcebook OnLine Index
The Genetic Alliance
NORD (National Organization for Rare Diseases) Database

Click here to branch to the American Self-Help Clearinghouse listing of toll-free phone numbers for a wide variety of topics.