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Prepared Witness Testimony The House Committee on Energy and Commerce
Assessing Initiatives to Increase Organ Donations
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Mr. Tim Olsen
Thank you very much for inviting the Wisconsin Donor Network to be represented at this hearing. It's an honor for us to participate and we applaud your efforts to increase organ donation. The Wisconsin Donor Network is one of two organ procurement organizations in Wisconsin. There are also three tissue banks and an eye bank. We all work together in many ways, but also pursue awareness opportunities as individual organizations and have each been very successful with our organ and tissue recovery efforts. With that in mind, I am only speaking on behalf of the Wisconsin Donor Network today, not all of these state organizations. Wisconsin is often looked to as an excellent donor state and we're very proud of that status. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what we have done, if anything, that has made donation in Wisconsin so successful. We don't have a registry and we don't have any methods of determining how many people act on our awareness efforts. I can, though, share with you many characteristics and programs that we believe have made a positive impact on donation in Wisconsin. Two of the biggest influencing factors over the past 10-15 years, I believe, are our former governor and our successful transplant centers. During Tommy Thompson's 14 years as Wisconsin governor, he was the state's biggest proponent of organ donation. We was very outspoken about it, as he continues to be, and served as an excellent leader for organ donation awareness throughout Wisconsin. He also implemented an annual ceremony and governor's medal to honor donors and their families, a tradition that we expect to continue this summer, its 10th year. We have also benefited from having four outstanding transplant centers in the state. Even though Wisconsin is only the 18th most populated state, only seven other states in the country performed more transplants than the 796 that took place in Wisconsin last year. When successful transplant centers are returning their patients to their homes, jobs, schools, churches and social circles, that shows others by example that organ donation is saving lives and is a great way to help others, which in turn makes others more inclined to donate. We have also tried to be aggressive with our awareness activities. The Wisconsin Donor Network relies on the assistance of 300 outstanding volunteers, almost all of whom have a personal connection to donation as transplant recipients, family members of recipients, or family members of donors. They speak to groups about their experience, hand out information and answer questions at health fairs and special events and just serve as great examples of the success and importance of donation and transplant. They also staff the Wisconsin Donor Network information booths at the Wisconsin State Fair and other county fairs. Last year more than 1,100 people signed up to be donors at our three fair booths, and nearly 2,500 people took donor information or materials at the booths. We hold an annual run/walk, Sarah's Stride, held in honor and memory of a local teenager who died while awaiting a transplant. The fifth annual Sarah's Stride three weeks ago attracted more than 1,250 participants and raised more than $55,000 for donor awareness efforts in Wisconsin. The funds raised through Sarah's Stride and other donations are used to fund special donor awareness projects. One of the most important projects that it funded, and continues to fund, is the driver's education curriculum that we developed to provide to drivers' education instructors. In the summer of 2000 Wisconsin passed a law requiring at least 30 minutes of organ and tissue donation information as part of drivers' education programs. To support that mandate, the Wisconsin Donor Network developed a curriculum tailored for driver's education instructors to use in the classroom and provided it at no cost to every drivers' education program in the state that fall. A few months later, in early 2001, the Wisconsin Donor Network finished a more comprehensive curriculum on organ and tissue donation for health education instructors and sent it free to every high school in the state. We're also very proud of our Wisconsin Coalition on Donation, which is a group of organizations with a common interest in donation from throughout the state that have joined together to work on awareness projects that we ordinarily wouldn't be able to address at the state level on our own. Both state organ procurement organizations, all three tissue banks, the eye bank, a blood bank, the kidney, liver, lung and heart associations, and others have spearheaded some very successful awareness events within the past two years and continues to increase its efforts. More recently, the Wisconsin Donor Network launched its website, which is now a little more than a year old. Traffic to the website continues to grow as it serves as a great on-line resource for organ donation information for state residents. Also last year, the Wisconsin Donor Network developed its own television ad and for the first time committed to a substantial paid advertising campaign. We chose to target women in our service area, age 35 to 54, for several reasons, and ran the ad throughout 2002. We have no way of knowing what effect, if any, the ad had, but we do know that our 2002 consent rate of 66 percent was significantly higher than the national average, which is typically measured at between 45 and 54 percent. Even more dramatic, our donations increased 33 percent from 2001 to 2002. That 33 percent increase contrasts with the 1.6 percent overall national increase last year and was the third highest increase of all organ procurement organizations in the nation last year. (VHS tape of the ad available.) Thank you for allowing me provide a brief overview of our efforts in Wisconsin. We truly appreciate your interest in this very important public health issue.
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