Written by Zoe Engels, Contributing Writer and Editor
There are currently about 90,000 people in the United States waiting for a kidney transplant, and 11 people every day die during this wait, but living donors can shorten this wait. More than 7,000 transplants were made possible by living donors in 2024 alone.
Think you’ve seen that first paragraph before? You have! But the stats were different. We wrote about living kidney donation back in 2022 when we interviewed Lisa Emmott, Director of Operations and Secretary of the Board of the National Kidney Donation Organization (NKDO).
Since then, the number of living donors who made transplants possible has increased from about 6,500. It might not seem like a huge jump, but that’s definitely progress in the form of hundreds of extra lives saved annually. By raising awareness about organ donation, we can keep saving lives and increasing those numbers.
Living organ donation also has a greater transplant success rate than deceased organ donation, meaning organs like kidneys from living donors work longer on average than those from deceased donors.
SODA recently spoke to Emily Polet-Monterosso, Executive Director of NKDO, via email.
What is NKDO? It’s the largest organization of living kidney donors in the world. Members also include kidney patients, kidney transplant recipients, caretakers, and medical professionals, among others who wish to improve access to and education about kidney transplantation. Their ultimate goal, as Polet-Monterosso told SODA, is to find a kidney for all those nationwide who are waiting for a kidney transplant.
Recently, NKDO has started to focus on building its connections with students.
“Students are an often-overlooked demographic, but they have such a major capacity to change the world for the better,” Polet-Monterosso said.
She continued, “For example, having conversations with family members to normalize the idea of donation can make a big impact, especially in communities who are resistant to the idea of donation.”
Polet-Monterosso is a kidney donor herself.
“I first learned about kidney donation when I was in college, and I ended up donating when I was 31,” she said of her personal experience. “But I may not have made that decision if I hadn't thought about it when I was a student. I think it is super important to plant those seeds and encourage younger people to consider what is important to them and how they want to exist in the world as an adult.”
Did you know that March is National Kidney Month? It’s a time to raise awareness about kidney disease and, in turn, kidney donation.
NKDO is working to mobilize its living donor members to go out to campuses and groups of students nationwide and share their stories, answer questions about donation, and, Polet-Monterosso added, “Encourage those in attendance to think through the ways they might participate in increasing the number of living donations.”
Those who’d like to bring a speaker to their campus or community can reach out to NKDO via info@nkdo.org. Suggestions for how else NKDO can engage students can be sent to that email as well.
“We are grateful for the work that SODA is doing to promote life-saving organ donation, and we are committed to partnering with SODA and other student organizations to help spread the word!” Polet-Monterosso said.
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