(12/1/00, 3 p.m. ET) - The Backstreet Boys' Brian Littrell has been busy promoting his group's new chart-topping album Black & Blue for several months, but that's not the only project he's working on. Littrell tells LAUNCH that he remains active in his charitable organization, the Healthy Heart Club For Kids, which is a partnership with the St. Joseph Hospital Foundation in Lexington, Kentucky.
"We continuously hold fundraisers, and I donate money yearly to them," says Littrell. "We've kind of branched out our accounts and our funds to funding heart surgeries and funding scholarship programs and stuff like that in the state of Kentucky, and we're actually branching out. We might even go nationwide with the Heart Foundation and the Healthy Heart Club to YMCAs across the nation. That's what we're working on doing right now, which would be very, very beneficial to young kids and people of all ages that are born with a heart defect."
In 1980, Kentucky native Littrell, then 5, was hospitalized in the pediatrics unit of Lexington's St. Joseph Hospital to treat a serious infection of the heart muscle--the future Backstreet Boy was born with a ventricular septal defect, which is a small hole between the left and right ventricles of the heart. In 1998 Littrell underwent successful elective surgery to correct it, and later that year he started his Healthy Heart Club For Kids, which offers education, exercise programs, and nutrition counseling for children with heart problems and those at risk. A committee comprising physicians, administrators, several nurses, and others--including Littrell's mother Jackie--oversees the organization.
The Backstreet Boy tells LAUNCH that he's glad his career allows him to lend a hand to people who might be experiencing heart problems similar to his. "It's always important to give back because I've received so many blessings in my life, and to be where I'm at success-wise and career-wise--it's amazing. You know, I can never forget, and to go back to that and to be able to help other people is an amazing feat. It just blesses my heart even more to know that I can do that, and that I'm in a situation to help out."
The Healthy Heart Club For Kids is currently running a promotion at sjhlex.org, where those who order a new Brian Littrell Healthy Heart Club For Kids sweatshirt between now and February 1 are automatically entered in a contest to win a Healthy Heart Club For Kids T-shirt autographed by Littrell. For questions, comments, or to make a donation to the organization, visit the website sjhlex.org, call 877-942-7426 toll free, or email club coordinator Brandon Edgington at edgingbr@sjhlex.org.
-- Jason Gelman, New York, and Neal Weiss