Montefiore Einstein Living Organ Donor Campaign: Increasing the Transplant Organ Pool

“I saw this commercial with a little girl running on the beach. At first, I had no idea what the commercial was about, but at the end, it was talking about becoming a living donor,” said Amy Powell. She wasted no time making the call to Montefiore Einstein Center for Transplantation to learn more and apply to become a living organ donor.

Donating a kidney or liver to a stranger is a profoundly selfless act. For Amy Powell, one glimpse of Montefiore Einstein’s living organ donation campaign was all it took to inspire the gift that saved the life of Ijaz Ahmad, the man who received one of Powell’s healthy kidneys.

Powell was the first person to respond to the Montefiore Einstein I Want To Live campaign. By donating one of her healthy kidneys, she was able to save the life of Ijaz Ahmad. The two recently met face to face for the first time in an emotional testament to the power of living organ donation.

“It means the world knowing that I was able to extend someone else’s life,” Powell says. “I lost my dad when I was 29, and I would do anything for five more minutes with him. So the idea of being able to give someone a longer life, for both themselves and their family, is what inspired me to do&bsp;this.”

Originally launched in 2021 by the Montefiore Einstein Center for Transplantation, the I Want To Live campaign’s goal is to help people in need of lifesaving kidney or liver transplants find matching donors, like Amy Powell, sooner. With a nationwide reach in media including television, print and digital, the campaign has significantly increased the number of people applying to become a living donor with Montefiore Einstein.

Living organ donations can significantly shorten wait times for patients, and for those with kidney or liver failure, with lifesaving results. With over 100,000 patients currently on the waitlist for kidney and liver transplants in the U.S., finding a donor represents the primary challenge of transplantation. Living donors who donate a kidney or portion of their liver offer tremendous benefits not only to the patient but also to the entire patient community. It increases the pool of available kidneys and livers, enabling more patients to have access to transplants.

At the heart of the campaign is a first-of-its-kind digital tool that Montefiore Einstein created to help its patients who are waiting for a lifesaving kidney or liver find a living organ donor. Our digital tool uses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and video to help our patients tell the story of why they want to live. The tool guides patients through a simple series of prompts to help them create unique, deeply moving videos, which we post on our I Want to Live website. Patients can also post their video on their social media channels. The tool also creates social posts, flyers, posters, and even postcards to reach more potential living organ donors.

We encourage you to take a moment to see the powerful, moving stories that some of our patients have created using the new tool on our I Want to Live website.

If you would like to become a living donor or perhaps need a lifesaving transplant, please visit our I Want to Live website or call Living Organ Donor–Liver at 1-888-RXLIVER (1-888-795-4837) or Living Organ Donor–Kidney at 1-877-CUREKDNY (1-877-287-3536) to speak with one of our transplant associate specialists.