2024 has flown by and we are ecstatic to highlight some of our biggest achievements and accomplishments!
During February, we were excited to share more about organ, eye and tissue donation during The Big Game which was hosted in Las Vegas for the first time on February 11, 2024! Nevada Donor Network found a way to bring awareness to our mission in a visual way with our online community in collaboration with Donate Life America (DLA) and the American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB). The campaign, Tackle the Wait, was created to highlight that more than 100,000 Americans are desperately waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant, and together we can work toward ending the wait by encouraging Americans to become registered organ, eye and tissue donors. We came together to #TackleTheWait!
In February, we were also honored to share Nevada Donor Network’s impact during the prior year. In 2023, our team was honored to serve 204 heroic organ donors. We were able to facilitate the recovery of 498 organs which were transplanted to several hundred grateful recipients. Additionally, we were able to help enhance and heal thousands of lives through 736 tissue heroic donors and 1,372 ocular heroic donors.
During April, we celebrated National Donate Life Month with several events, observances and more. From our annual Dogs, Donuts and Donate Life events in northern Nevada to 2024 Hope Glows in southern Nevada and our statewide Silver State Heroes competition, we were honored to share our mission with thousands of Nevadans.
In July, we are thrilled to announce that a member of Team Nevada was recognized as overall female athlete of the year at the Transplant Life Foundation’s 2024 Transplant Games of America! Congratulations to our Advocate for Life, Dinorah Arambula, on this incredible accomplishment. We are proud of her dedication to this event and our mission. Additionally, Team Nevada took home a collective 28 medals during the games!
During August, we announced the beginning of an incredible partnership with the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, which helps us bring awareness to organ, eye and tissue donation. It also encourages the community to connect with the impact heroic donors can have on others and allows our team to provide education to adults and children about donation. Lastly, we donated 1000+ books in honor of National Multicultural Donor Awareness Month (NMDAM), which share the impactful mission of donation. These books were distributed to 25 library branches across the valley!
In September, we celebrated our partnership with the Nevada DMV during National DMV Appreciation Month. We are proud to share that more than 64% of Nevadans are registered organ, eye and tissue donors. The national average state by state is 54% and we are proud to be 10% above the national average. Additionally, 99% of all registrations come from DMV offices across the country and we are honored to call them our front line in saving lives.
During October, we were thrilled to share the historic year our birth tissue program had! It launched in 2019, with the first placenta donation on August 8, 2019. We kicked off 2024 with a reimagined approach, renewed focus and a larger, dedicated team to provide the opportunity for placenta donation to our community. After repeated record-breaking months, the Birth Tissue Services team was thrilled to announce that before the end of September, the year-to-date birth tissue acquisitions reached 858, eclipsing the sum of all birth tissue acquisitions since the start of the program in 2019. We are excited about what the future holds for the Nevada Donor Network Birth Tissue Program!
In December, another huge announcement came about our Youth Education Program! Nevada Donor Network and the Nevada Department of Education have collaborated to launch the first-ever statewide curriculum for teachers and students to raise awareness about the lifesaving impact of organ, eye and tissue donation. The curriculum was developed in response to a requirement adopted in 2017 under Nevada Revised Statutes (NRS) 389.021, requiring that organ, eye and tissue donation be taught in middle and high school health education classes. This material will empower educators to meet these requirements by providing access to current statistics, in-depth information about the donation process and local heroic donor and grateful recipient stories to share in their classrooms. All of Nevada’s 260 middle and high schools will have access to these important materials!
We are honored to serve our Nevada Strong community and cannot wait for what 2025 holds! See you in the new year.