Philly-based nonprofit led nation in coordinating organ donations in 2022

A Philadelphia-based organ donation program led the nation in 2022 for coordinating the most organ transplants in the U.S., and the most donors for the 15th year in a row.

The Gift of Life Donor Program is a nonprofit organization that is designated by the federal government to coordinate potential organ donations and transplants from deceased donors in the eastern half of Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and Delaware. The region includes 126 acute-care hospitals and 13 transplant centers.

In 2022, the organization coordinated organ donations from 690 people who died, leading to 1,744 organ transplants. The majority of transplants — just more than 1,000 — were of kidneys.

“We’re bolstered by a community that continues to say yes to organ and tissue donation,” said Richard Hasz, president and chief executive of Gift of Life Donor Program.

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The organization is one of more than 50 nationwide that jumps into action when a person dies in a hospital. To be able to donate solid organs such as kidneys and the heart, a patient needs to be brain dead but still on a ventilator with a heartbeat. Those instances are rare, about 1% to 2% of all deaths in the U.S., Hasz said.

Unlike solid organs, tissues such as tendons, skin, and corneas can be recovered for a longer period of time after death and most deceased people are potential donors.

Gift of Life has the challenging task of reaching out to families in those incredibly difficult moments to ask whether they would like to donate the organs of their loved ones.

“We’re talking to families on their worst possible day,” Hasz said.

About half of the families of the 1,300 potential donors in the region in 2022 said yes. But often, families don’t know the wishes of the loved one who died, Hasz said. That’s why he urges people to register to be an organ donor.

“It only takes 30 seconds to register to be a donor, but that 30 seconds can mean a lifetime for somebody else,” he said.

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Althea Fogle has experience with all aspects of organ donations. In 2012, her 22-year-old daughter, Tiffany, died of a pulmonary embolism.

“I felt very blessed to be able to donate the corneas of my daughter and tissue and bone,” she said.

Because her daughter died on the way to the hospital, she wasn’t able to be a solid organ donor. Still, she was able to donate tissue.

Fogle was familiar with organ and tissue donation. She spent more than three decades working at the Lions Eye Bank of Delaware Valley, a cornea transplantation organization in Philadelphia.

A decade after Fogle became a “donor mom,” as she calls it, she received a kidney donation that spared her from dialysis to treat her stage 5 kidney disease. She waited just less than three years for the kidney.

More than 100,000 people nationwide are waiting for organs.

Now 72, Fogle says that she feels fantastic. When she talks about the kidney she received, she gets emotional. She hopes her story will make more people consider donations.

“I’m just so thankful to God for the compassion and the love of my donor family,” she said. “I feel blessed being a donor mom, and now, being a kidney recipient, I’m very very grateful.”

To register as an organ donor go to www.registerme.org/campaign/giftoflife.

Editor’s note: the story was updated to correct Althea Fogle’s age.