Thank you for being part of our Kidney Companions community.

Here we will provide updates, highlight the people within Kidney Companions, and share stories and actions you can take in a broader community.

We are excited to welcome 2024 - we have two new Kidney Companion partners we are going to be working with this year, and we look forward to continuing with our success as we build their support teams. In further recognition of our success, The Trinity Health transplant team in Grand Rapids has asked us to present Kidney Companions at the 2nd Annual Kidney Transplant Symposium on Thursday, April 11, 2024 at the Diocese of Grand Rapids Conference Center. The theme for this year's symposium is “Breaking Barriers to Transplant”.

We’ve also had our website updated a bit, including an archive of past newsletters and a link to events: https://www.kidneycompanions.org/

Join us at Stone Hound Brewing!

On the second Thursday of each month, we gather for all who are interested in learning about Kidney Companions. We will always have an existing volunteer there for you to ask questions and listen to their experience. This is a great time to explore your interest in becoming a volunteer or invite someone who you think would be interested.

Our next gathering will be:

Thursday, January 11th

5-7 at Stone Hound Brewing

3593 Bunker Hill Rd, Williamsburg, MI 49690

In late 2023, with the strong urging of the National Kidney Foundation, the Michigan Legislature passed the Living Donor Protection Act. The Living Donor Protection Act prevents insurance companies from denying, limiting coverage, or charging higher premiums to living organ donors solely based on their status as a living donor. This represents a significant step forward toward protecting living donors and growing the living donor pool; Michigan is now the 32nd state to pass such legislation. At this time there are almost 2,000 people in the state of Michigan actively waiting for a kidney, and our hope is that efforts such as this will remove barriers to living donation.