Outreach

Overview

Community Outreach team members are available to speak in a variety of settings and embrace the opportunity to do so. We educate on the importance of the Donor Registry, dispel myths and misconceptions, and answer questions about donation and transplantation.

Presentations to:

• High schools
• Colleges
• Businesses
• Churches
• Professional groups
• Healthcare staff
• Civic organizations
• College and university donor registry drives/projects

Share Your Gift of Life Story

Click here to share your story of inspiration with others. Who knows, you may help save someone’s life.

Speaker Request Form

Multicultural Outreach

According to HRSA almost 60% of the national transplant waiting list is made up of men, women, and children from multicultural populations. This is because some diseases of the kidney, heart, lung, pancreas, and liver are found more frequently in these populations.

Transplant success rates increase when organs are matched between members of the same ethnic and racial group. For multicultural communities, there is a shortage of organs available for transplantation due to the lack of registered donors from these populations. Consequently, a lack of organs donated by minorities makes the waiting 2 times longer for the multicultural population.

There are many ways to raise awareness in the multicultural community, such as learning the truths about organ and tissue donation, reviewing resources for faith communities, liking us on Facebook and following on Twitter, and schedule a speaker for your organization today. For more information or to schedule a speaking engagement, contact Crysta McGee at [email protected].

Life Is Cool

What is Life Is Cool?

Life is Cool, a new online health education program to help teach fourth-grade elementary school students in Kentucky and West Virginia about organ donation. Life is Cool is a free program that meets state-approved curriculum standards for topics such as organs, tissues, blood, corneas, and the importance of making healthy choices.  

Teachers can register their class for the online program without disclosing student information and have access to resources housed on the site. The resources include a digital teaching manual complete with topics for discussion, support materials for 10 teaching sessions, videos that complete each lesson, and a grade book that keeps track of student progress. 

Donate Life KY moved to the online platform due to the ongoing pandemic so that students would still have a way to experience this educational program, but now virtually. The Life is Cool program provides students with a memorable experience while helping them understand at an early age how organs can be used to help save lives.  

Each participating teacher receives a digital teaching guide complete with Powerpoint presentations, handouts and support materials for the five teaching sessions. Each student is provided a workbook to go along with the teaching sessions. All of this is provided at no cost to the school or student. The program finale is the on-site Life Is Cool learning fair that students, teachers, and volunteers won’t soon forget!

Want to bring Life is Cool to a school(s) in your community? Or just want to learn more about it? Visit the website at LifeIsCoolKY.org!

FAQs

Understanding the Process – Donors

Anyone could be a potential donor and everyone should consider registering, at any age. It’s important because less than 1% of the population ends up being eligible to donate based on the circumstances that must be met.

When Can Organs Be Donated?

Anyone could be a potential donor and everyone should consider registering, at any age. It’s important because less than 1% of the population ends up being eligible to donate based on the circumstances that must be met.

To be eligible for organ donation, a person must be declared brain dead with no brain activity, and kept on a ventilator. Patients with partial brain injury and coma patients are still alive and receiving blood to the brain, meaning they are not candidates for donation.

Understanding Brain Death

Brain death is permanent. It’s the irreversible loss of the brain and brain stem, where all brain tissue is dead and no blood flow or electrical activity is present.

Leading Causes

• Cerebrovascular injury: Massive bleeding caused by a stroke or ruptured aneurysm.
• Anoxia: Loss of oxygen to the brain caused by drowning, heart attack or drug overdose.
• Brain tumor: Uncontrollable growth resulting in permanent loss of blood flow and oxygen to the brain.
• Severe trauma: For example, a serious head injury caused by a motor vehicle accident.

How Donation Works

Organ procurement takes place like any other surgery—in a sterile operating room with careful, experienced surgeons. After the surgery, recovery professionals perform routine reconstruction and preservation so customary funeral arrangements are possible.

By Donation Only

Buying and selling organs is a federal crime. Among practical and ethical reasons, buying and selling organs would lead to inequitable access and some would have an unfair advantage based on wealth.

Fact or Fiction

Donor families don’t pay hospitals for organ donation surgery.

Organ and tissue recovery agencies assume expenses—donor families are never responsible for medical costs associated with donation.

Fact!

Organ donation doesn’t interfere with the donor’s funeral.

Donation does not prohibit any part of the standard funeral process, including the ability to have an open-casket funeral.

Fact!

Doctors won’t try as hard to save patients who are registered donors.

Doctors have no influence on donation, and would lose their medical license if they didn’t make every attempt to save a patient’s life.

Fiction!

Understanding the Process – Recipients

Being placed on the transplant waiting list doesn’t mean an automatic transplant. Thousands of patients in need of transplants are often forced to wait for days, months, even years without knowing if and when they’ll receive what they need.

Every 10 Minutes

That’s how quickly another name is added to the National Transplant waiting list. However, it’s a wait so many have no other choice but to take.

Worth the Wait

With so few organs available, before someone is added to the list, professionals have to determine if that patient is emotionally, physically and financially stable enough to take care of the new organ for the rest of his or her life.

Waitlist Factor:

• Patient’s health/ medical urgency
• Medical and social history
• Blood type and size of the organ needed
• Distance between donor and recipient
• Immune system matching United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) details

Factors Not Considered:

• Income or wealth
• Fame and status
• Age
• Race
• Gender
• Sexual Orientation
• Religion

Finding a Match

People waiting for transplants are on the national list for potential transplants and listed at their transplant center. The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) maintains the list and aids in finding compatible matches 24 hours a day, every day.