Donor Diaries
Donor Diaries is a podcast about the beauty and messiness of living organ donation. Get ready for some amazing stories about what happens when people decide to share their organs with other people, when people chose to share life. The sharing of kidneys and other organs is an incredibly fascinating topic that teaches a lot about kindness, love, and life! There are over 100,000 people on the kidney transplant waitlist today, and sadly about 13 people die each day waiting for a kidney that they never receive. One in three Americans are at risk for developing chronic kidney disease and one in nine already have kidney disease. Most don’t even know it. Donor Diaries shares unfiltered stories of kidney donation through the voices of living donors and straight talk from transplant experts who are committed to bringing the conversation of living organ donation to the forefront of society, so patients no longer have to die or suffer while waiting for a transplant.
Donor Diaries
Donor Disincentives, with Martha Gershun | EP 15
In 2018 Martha donated a kidney to a woman she read about in the newspaper. She co-authored a book, Kidney to Share, published by Cornell University Press, about that experience and has given presentations at more than 35 transplant clinics, medical schools, and bioethics centers on her experience as a living kidney donor.
In today’s episode, we discuss donor disincentives- the factors that can make it difficult for somebody to donate a kidney, even though they may really want to. Martha breaks these disincentives into 3 categories: logistics, psychosocial and financial. The top 3 disincentives facing donors are the cost of travel and lodging associated with donation, loss of income while recovering from surgery, and cost of home and/or dependent care during the donor’s recovery.
Martha speaks candidly about her donation experience and how some of these disincentives made it difficult to donate a kidney. She also discusses how the disincentives she experienced may disproportionately affect a donor with a different background than her.
About Martha:
Martha Gershun is a nonprofit consultant, writer, and community volunteer with over 40 years of leadership experience in Fortune 500 corporations, start-up ventures, and non-profit organizations. Gershun graduated with a B.A. cum laude from Harvard University and holds an M.B.A. with first year honors from the Harvard Business School, where she studied marketing, service operations, and customer experience. She earned a graduate diploma in Economics from the University of Stirling, Scotland, where she was a Rotary International Fellow.
References
Removing Disincentives to Kidney Donation
Kidney to Share
Martha Gershun