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.

An update on the Kidney Companions community:

• One person is listed for transplant

• Two people inching closer to being listed for a transplant

• Twelve fully vetted volunteers to surround these folks

• Sixty seven email subscribers to read this message

• Five people on the Kidney Companions leadership board

People and connections is what is making this all work. Thank you to each and every person for being here and making your contributions.

We welcome more to our community! See below for our next gathering or have someone you know sign up to receive these newsletters.

Join us at Workshop — another Pour for More venue.

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 April 12th

5-7 at Workshop Brewing

221 Garland St, Traverse City, MI 49684

UNOS is a private non-profit “quasi-governmental” agency that manages all of the nation’s organ transplant and coordinates with Organ Procurement Organizations at the state level (Gift of Life is the organ procurement organization for Michigan) to ensure the collection and allocation of organs. UNOS is the only agency given authority over transplantation in the United States, based on the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, which was largely written for UNOS to act as a quasi-governmental agency under a single contract. When an organ becomes available, a local organ procurement organization sends medical information to UNOS. The online UNOS platform then uses algorithms, donor and candidate information to generate a list of matches ranked by compatibility, need and geographic location. The organ is then offered to the transplant hospital with which the best-matched patient is linked. If the hospital refuses the organ, it's offered to the next patient.

Recently, controversies have arisen regarding UNOS’s role due to concerns in racial/ethnic disparities, long-wait lists, and increasingly wasted organs (including an estimated 17,000 unprocured kidneys and 3500 discarded kidneys in 2020). Informed by a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the Senate Finance Committee and Department of Human Health are proposing to offer separate contracts to multiple entities who will operate specific parts of the complex system, thus breaking up the core functions of UNOS as a single organization. The proposal will change how network is structure, change the leadership with an independent Board of Directors, and create a public dashboard with the idea of enhancing transparency in the organ matching process. Perhaps most importantly, is that President Biden’s budget proposal for 2024 will allocate $67 million (more than double current funding) dollars for organ-related work.

Both hope and skepticism have ensued. Several patient advocacy groups are applauding the drastic changes while other experts have expressed skepticism that such dramatic changes will ultimately lead to a more equitable and transparent transplant process. Nonetheless, the informed approach and attention that this has garnered should be a positive thing overall for our patients living with kidney disease and hoping for a new kidney.