Minority Donor Awareness Month

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August is National Minority Donor Awareness Month!

Follow on Facebook and Twitter and join your Donate Life community in celebrating minority donors and in elevating the experiences of those facing disparate need and outcomes in transplant. Do your part to learn about and address inequities and systemic racism that underly health and transplant disparities, and that also creates resistance to donation. Together, we can educate, encourage, and empower more gifts of life, sight, and health to bring hope to everyone who waits.

More about the national observance:

National Minority Donor Awareness Month stems from National Minority Donor Awareness Week, founded in 1996 by the National Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program (MOTTEP), to bring heightened awareness to donation and transplantation in multicultural communities – focusing primarily on African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander and American Indian/Alaskan Native communities.

The National Multicultural Action Group includes the Association for Multicultural Affairs in Transplantation (AMAT), Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO), Donate Life America (DLA), Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA), National Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program (MOTTEP) and National Kidney Foundation (NKF).

For more information and resources for Hispanic/Latino communities in Oregon and SW Washington visit our Done Vida page. 

Multicultural Communities in Donation and Transplantation

  • 60% of people currently on the U.S. transplant waiting list
  • More than 32,000 of those waiting are African American/Black
  • Nearly 23,000 of those waiting are Hispanic/Latino
  • Nearly 10,000 of those waiting are Asian/PacificIslander
  • Nearly 1,000 of those waiting are American Indian/Alaska Native
  • 46% of people who received organ transplants in 2019
  • 8,326 African American/Black organ transplant recipients
  • 6,707 Hispanic/Latino organ transplant recipients
  • 2,356 Asian/Pacific Islander organ transplant recipients
  • 271 American Indian/Alaska Native organ transplant recipients
  • 32% of deceased and living organ donors in 2019
  • 1,798 deceased and 617 living African American/Black donors
  • 1,770 deceased and 1,046 living Hispanic/Latino donors
  • 345 deceased and 329 living Asian/Pacific Islander donors
  • 57 deceased and 23 living American Indian/Alaska Native donors

 * Data from Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) as of May 12, 2020