Hi everyone,
My name is Josh Morrison, and a few years ago I donated one of my kidneys to a stranger. Since then, I've teamed up with another non-direct donor to start a non-profit organization called WaitList Zero (
http://waitlistzero.org/), which is dedicated to supporting living donors in order to end the waitlist.
Our latest mission has been to urge the federal agency in charge of organ donation, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), to support policies that increase living donation (as of now they do not; you can read more about their stance and impact here:
http://waitlistzero.org/content/hrsa-advocacy-campaign-0). We're part of a Coalition of donor and patient non-profits (
https://www.facebook.com/livingdonationcoalition) that will be meeting with HRSA on January 16th to discuss their stance.
Leading up to the meeting, we're conducting a social media campaign aimed at having HRSA know that we're going into the meeting with plenty of people who support our cause. That's why we started a Change.org petition (with already over 300 signatures), which we hope you'll sign:
https://www.change.org/p/health-resources-and-services-administration-support-living-kidney-donation We've also announced that next week is Living Donors Week, and to that end we're planning to leave a large amount of comments on HRSA's Facebook page beginning Monday. We'll have more about that on Monday (we'll post instructions here), but we hope you can join in that effort as well.
Until then, we hope you sign the petition and like us on Facebook (
https://www.facebook.com/waitlistzero).
Sincerely,
Josh Morrison
Co-founder, WaitListZero