August is Minority Donor Awareness Month

Their experience reflects a larger need for organ donation awareness among communities of color. August marks National Minority Donor Awareness Month, an annual observance that celebrates organ donation and transplantation in communities of color, encourages donor registration, and promotes healthy lifestyles.

Communities of color make up more than half of the more than 100,000 people on the national waiting list for lifesaving transplants, but the group remains underrepresented among registered donors, according to a Gift of Life. The disparity is especially pronounced in Philadelphia, where nearly 70% of people waiting for lifesaving organ transplants are African Americans. Nearly 93% of those waiting need kidney transplants.

The demand for kidneys also far exceeds the number of transplants performed.

Dr. Anthony Watkins, enterprise kidney transplant director at Thomas Jefferson Health, said Black and Hispanic communities experience higher rates of end-stage renal disease while also facing lower access to transplantation.

“There’s over 90,000 people on the waiting list to receive a kidney transplant; however, we only perform roughly 27,000 kidney transplants a year,” Watkins said. “That’s a huge discrepancy.”

Watkins said ethnic groups that experience higher rates of kidney disease have lower access to transplantation.

“It’s important for us in the transplant community to use every opportunity that we can to share this information with the broader community,” Watkins said. “That they’re aware of the realities of the need, the impact that transplant has on improving people’s lives and the possibilities people have to be organ donors and still live a long healthy life.”

For Levy Giles and Warner, their experience has made raising awareness about organ donation personal.

That push for awareness will continue Friday, Aug. 28 at 6 p.m. at Philadelphia’s AMC Fashion District, where there will be a screening of “Abundant,” a film centered around the experiences of organ donations.

Following the screening, there will be a live panel discussing organ donation, altruism, and the importance of organ donation in minority communities.