I was lucky. Perhaps not in the traditional sense, but I underwent two liver transplants before turning 28. And while I waited approximately 19 months for each donation, I got them before dying a preventable death. Many patients awaiting donors aren’t as fortunate. In...

Hello, I’m Bill Catlette. For 8 years I’ve been on the board of directors of the National Foundation for Transplants, a national, Memphis-based nonprofit that advocates for organ and tissue transplant patients and helps them raise critically needed funds for uncovered...

Have you ever wanted to do something to help others but couldn’t decide where to start, how to help, or whom to help?  Like most donors, you want your financial donation to make a real difference in someone’s life . . . to have a direct impact, personally.  However,...

UNOS honors Lisa Schaffner posthumously during their June 2022 award ceremony for her work increasing awareness about the need for organ and tissue donation.

Initially, no other university hospital equipped to perform an ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) was able to accept and admit 22-year-old Lexi Lester.  Like many hospitals facing sporadic bed shortages across the United States, the hospitals contacted for...

(Above Photo)  Kidney Donor Athletes' One Kidney Climb.  Twenty-two kidney donors climbed to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to promote living donor organ transplants. Our society is accustomed to complete strangers donating gifts to people they do not...

According to Michigan Medicine’s Inherited Kidney Diseases Clinic, more than 60 genetic diseases are currently known to directly or indirectly affect the kidneys. Inherited kidney conditions range from relatively common conditions to very rare syndromes. The clinic...

NFT pediatric patient, Hannah, and her parents speak about her transplant journey during Give Blood, Share Joy blood drive. When Hannah was eight years old, turning nine, she spent almost an entire year in the hospital.  Her health issues started with concerning...

On Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, Terry Shaffer was one of the first responders to arrive at Flight 93 crash site in Somerset County, Pennsylvania in a field near Shanksville.  The plane had crashed in Shaffer’s fire district. Tragically, there were no survivors...