National Kidney Donation Organization (NKDO) Initiates Living Donor Mentor Program at Three Major Kidney Transplant Centers

The National Kidney Donation Organization (NKDO) has implemented Donor Connect, a living donor mentor program, at three major kidney transplant centers: Hackensack University Medical Center's Kidney Transplant Program, MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, and Penn Transplant Institute.

Since February 2021, NKDO has provided its team of living donor mentors to donor candidates who register with the National Kidney Registry (NKR). The Donor Connect program is now being offered to transplant centers affiliated with the NKR and who use their DASH system for managing donor and recipient candidates.

(Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Ned Brooks, NKDO CEO, says, "Living Donor Coordinators (LDCs) have a complicated and stressful job. They provide a great deal of information to a prospective donor and answer questions to determine a candidate's suitability as a donor. A trained mentor who has already donated can talk with the donor candidate and answer non-medical questions. This way, the candidate begins the donation journey with a basic understanding of the process. The LDC can more efficiently and effectively interact with the candidate. This can improve the conversion rates for candidates to complete the process and become living donors. We believe that these three transplant centers will soon be joined by other transplant centers who recognize that NKDO's mentor program provides an opportunity to increase the number of living kidney donations."

With almost 100,000 patients on the waiting list for a kidney transplant and only 18,019 transplants at the pre-Covid peak in 2019, there is a tremendous need for living kidney donors. NKDO is the largest living kidney donor organization in the country, devoted to eliminating the waitlist for kidney transplants and protecting the interests of living donors.

Dr. David Serur, Medical Director of Kidney Transplantation at Hackensack, says, "There is no other organization in the country like NKDO. We know them well and we look forward to the impact their mentors will have on the living donor program here at Hackensack."

For more information about the mentor program and National Kidney Donation Organization, contact NKDO's Executive Director, Lisa Emmott, at l.emmott@nkdo.org.