Organ donation services in New England are trying to diversify their donor pool.
The number of needed organ transplants in the U.S. is disproportionately high in Black and Brown communities, but they lack donors of similar genetic backgrounds, said Sean Fitzpatrick from New England Donor Services.
He said part of the problem is historic disparities in healthcare for communities of color, as well as cultural beliefs and misinformation.
“Although you’re not race matching, you are matching based on certain biological characteristics,” Fitzpatrick said. “And you do get better and more matches from people who are genetically similar to you. And so, what we face is a number of multicultural communities like Black and Hispanic that are in need of transplants, but the number of transplants from individuals of similar biological background is less.”
Dennis Thomas, a Black sports coach at Bulkeley High School in Hartford, became a donor advocate after he received a heart transplant almost 15 years ago.
“A lot of people in the Black and Brown community don’t like going to the doctors and that’s why I became an advocate for organ transplant and how it helped me,” Thomas said. “I spread information in my community. I take it very personally being an activist in my community to bring out that awareness. Just having a transplant is a life changing experience and being a living person that deals with it every day to help others.”
Thomas wrote a book "Matters of the Heart" about his journey. He survived more than 10 years on the heart transplant list.
To learn more about becoming an donor, go to registerme.org.
