Welcome to Our Blog!
Hello everyone, and happy Donate Life Month! As the co-founders of ODAC, we wanted to write to you to wish you safety and good health during this time. In doing so, we thought we would start writing to you all every month just to stay in touch! It’s important to us that you know who we are and understand why we started ODAC. It’s our hope you will join us in our mission to have more people become organ donors! To kick off our new blog, we thought we’d start off by sharing a little bit about the origins of this nonprofit.
Chirag: Honestly, organ donation was not something I thought of much when I was younger. As a teenager in Philadelphia, projects like Gift of Life as well as the DMV constantly promoted the cause, and it was just natural to register to become an organ donor after passing the driver’s test. Immediately after high school, I began working in research, where the focus is to predict transplant rejection while avoiding biopsies. As I spent more time working in the lab, I realized I wanted to do more for the transplant community. I shadowed the head of the lung transplant team at NYU Langone, met with transplant recipients and learned that New York ranks 50th out of 50 in the number of eligible registered organ donors. From there, it was simple: I wanted to give back to the New York community that had so kindly taken me in as a college student. I wanted to educate the youth of the state and encourage them to become organ donors.
Candice: Three years back my best friend’s mom found out she needs a kidney transplant, but because she’s a cancer survivor, she’s placed rather low on the transplant list. A year later, I began working with Mount Sinai Medical Center’s Delirium Team. I’m in the Transplant ICU often and have seen first hand how receiving an organ transplant transforms lives and gives hope for the future. So in 2018, I helped start this organization with the hopes of educating people about organ donation: to debunk its myths and increase the number of organ donors in our state, considering New York, my home state, ranks last in the nation in percent of residents registered as organ donors. We were officially incorporated as a nonprofit in June 2019, and by December we partnered with LiveOnNY, the federally designated organ procurement organization for the greater NYC area. My friend’s mom is still waiting on her kidney, but it is my hope that I can make a difference with my deeds.
We couldn’t be prouder of ODAC, but we know our work is only starting now. For anyone reading this, you can help too! If you would like to join our team, fill out the form HERE, and if you know anyone or any high school that would like to have us come, email odacnewyork@gmail.com. For more information about ODAC, please check out our website www.odacny.org. We can’t wait to talk to you all soon!
