April is National Donate Life Month

As a member of the transplant community, you are probably aware that April is Donate Life Month. While not all of us work directly with the organ donation process, it is something that touches every one of us. To support this ongoing effort, the AST provides information about organ donation to the general public through our Power2Save initiative as well as our brand new Live Donor Toolkit.

To celebrate Donate Life Month, we invited Donate Life America to write a guest blog post about its current initiatives.

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Patients look to their clinicians as their advocates and count on their commitment to helping save their lives, so it essential that our clinical partners join in outreach efforts to promote donation and donor registration. National Donate Life Month presents the perfect opportunity to utilize your unique channels and others that commitment to the next level.

National Donate Life Month (NDLM) was instituted by Donate Life America and its partnering organizations in 2003. Celebrated in April each year, NDLM features an entire month of local, regional and national activities to help encourage Americans to register as organ, eye and tissue donors and to celebrate those that have saved lives through the gift of donation.

The 2018 NDLM artwork was inspired by the image of a rainbow and Maya Angelou’s quote, “Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.”

Often following a storm, the presence of a rainbow provides optimism and motivates us to endure through dark times. Similarly, organ, eye and tissue donation is the bridge of comfort and hope between one family’s mourning and another’s healing — turning tragedy into renewed life.

Maya Angelou’s message applies to all of us, no matter our background or experiences. We all know rainbows — people that have helped carry us through life and its challenges. In turn, we may also have the opportunity to be rainbows in other people’s clouds through promoting the gift of organ, eye and tissue donation. By encouraging others to register to be a donor or consider living donation, you can change one ray of light into a spectrum of healing and compassion.

Your Donate Life Connection

Hundreds of thousands of lapel pins are being worn by Donate Life Advocates across the country every day, showing their connection to donation and transplantation. Donate Life America is in the process of creating additional pin styles. Please take a moment to rank your top three pins in this brief survey by April 30. We will have pins with the “winning” phrases at ATC for you to pick up. Thank you in advance for your help.

Our New Joint Observance

We hope you will also mark your calendars for a new observance that will be taking place during the last week of NDLM: National Pediatric Transplant Week. Celebrated April 23-27, 2018, National Pediatric Transplant Week was created in collaboration with the AST, the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) and the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) to raise awareness about the nearly 2,000 children currently waiting for transplant — and help save their lives.

National Pediatric Transplant Week offers clinical partners the platform to talk about the powerful message of ending the pediatric waiting list through sharing the of innovative work and patient stories, while also honoring donor families whose children have saved and healed lives through organ, eye and tissue donation.

For more information about National Donate Life Month, National Pediatric Transplant Week and to access downloadable social media images, web banners, monitor images and more please visit: https://www.DonateLife.net/NDLM. To see the wealth of promotional rainbow-themed items available, log in to DonationMerchandise.com, click MEMBERS and then select the NDLM 2018 category.

We wish you a Happy National Donate Life Month. Thank you for your efforts in educating about the cause of donation and the importance of registering your decision to be an organ, eye and tissue donor!

Maya Angelou™ is a trademark licensed by Caged Bird Legacy, LLC.