Eddie
Eddie has been ECHO’s mascot for many years. Each family staying in hospital is gifted a cuddly teddy ECHO in their ECHO Cares pack and Eddie has even run marathons before!
ECHO is excited to introduce Eddie & Friends – a magazine designed especially for children aged 10 and under with heart conditions who are patients in hospital, and their siblings.
The 15-page magazine is packed with activities, puzzles and jokes to help keep children entertained and offer some distraction while they recover from surgery or treatment. Each magazine also comes with 24 fun stickers. We hope they love it (and you do too!)
As part of this resource, we are thrilled to introduce you to Eddie ECHO’s friends Remi, Sunny and Koko – three new characters who will join Eddie across ECHO’s magazine and feature in our future resources.
We hope together they will bring fun and comfort for children in the ECHO heart community, when visiting Evelina London Network Hospitals to undergo surgery, treatment and during recovery.
Eddie & Friends has been produced in collaboration with children, young people, parents, carers and medical staff in the ECHO heart community. We are so grateful to all our contributors and those who spoke to us to share ideas and help make this magazine a reality.
Eddie has been ECHO’s mascot for many years. Each family staying in hospital is gifted a cuddly teddy ECHO in their ECHO Cares pack and Eddie has even run marathons before!
Remi is a ring-tailed lemur who loves drawing and painting. Because of a heart condition sometimes Remi has to go to hospital – Remi’s favourite part of visiting hospital is when the play specialist makes it fun with art and crafts!
Sunny’s favourite thing to learn about is science. Sunny also loves puzzles, pretending to fly around in outer space, and being the big sibling to Koko.
Koko is Sunny’s little sibling and has a heart condition, which needed surgery when Koko was younger. Koko loves making people laugh, and doing colouring-in with Sunny, Eddie and Remi.
Eddie & Friends magazine is available for FREE from March 2022 for all children with heart conditions and their siblings who are inpatients at Evelina London including the cardiac Sky ward, PICU and also those visiting the Walrus Outpatients Department. You can pick up your copy by speaking to your cardiac team or play specialist.
Already got your copy? We would love to hear your thoughts so let us know if you would like to share your experience of Eddie & Friends!
“We are very proud to have published this new resource produced specifically for children with heart conditions and their siblings while they are in hospital, created in collaboration with children, young people and adults across the ECHO heart community. In addition to being a relaxing distraction, Eddie & Friends includes practical resources to help children under 10 to talk with their grown-up or cardiac nurse team about how they are feeling, helping to alleviate some of the worry or stress which we know comes with staying in hospital. I'd like to thank those young patients, parents & carers who contributed and helped produce this resource - we look forward to seeing it being read and enjoyed by children, parents and cardiac staff.”
Samantha Johnson - Chief Executive, ECHO
ECHO plans to provide this magazine to children staying in hospitals across the Evelina London and Royal Brompton networks. We will publish an update on our website, social media and e-newsletter once this is in place.
We also plan to create a specialist magazine for ECHO Teens aged 11-17 – watch this space! Want to help shape future resources? We would love to hear from you.
ECHO has produced Eddie & Friends with the help of our members and we thank all the children and young people who provided feedback about what they would like to see in a magazine like this. We are grateful to those who spoke to us and shared your ideas via social media and by telephone over the past year. With your help, we have been able to move forward with this project during what has been a challenging time for everyone in the ECHO heart community.
Eddie & Friends magazine has been written with the help of Cecilia Adamou, a young writer who has grown up with a heart condition and has had a heart transplant. Cecilia has been an ECHO member since she was born and continues to be a big supporter of the charity. We thank Cecilia for working with us as a writer and creating this fantastic magazine, with careful consideration of what it means to be a young person in hospital.
Thank you to the medical, nursing and psychology teams at Evelina London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust for their contributions as well as the Centre for Medical Engineering at King’s College London.
A huge thank you as well to illustrator Marc Jackson, designer Laura Pelham, London Road Press and Considered Creative for managing the design production, and photographer Gary Cooper.
Looking for other information and guidance for children living with a heart condition? Check out our Information and Resources.
