National Kidney Donor Advocate Conference, on YouTube

 Here's an announcement I received from Ned Brooks, the founder of  NKDO, National Kidney Donation Organization (formerly Donor to Donor).  If I understand correctly, the different talks and interviews will be available at the link after first streaming in conference style, starting at 9am Pacific time. It includes a video of Ned interviewing me.

I'll update this post as necessary. 

"This Wednesday, October 21^st, NKDO, National Kidney Donation Organization (formerly Donor to Donor) will release the virtual National Kidney Donor Advocate Conference. This event is designed to give volunteer living donor advocates the information they need to be more effective advocates for living donation. Transplant industry experts across the country will be presenting to you and delivering invaluable advice about their area of expertise.

The conference will stream on our YouTube channel beginning at 12:00 noon Eastern this Wednesday. The conference will be in segments and accessed through the “playlist”, either streaming as one event or accessed at different points in the conference. The link is  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsoS-yavRQCVl7bwcjT2iCA , which will go live at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

- Have you ever wondered about the transplant surgeons who do the surgery? What they are thinking and what they would like you to know? Dr. Joshua Mezrich, transplant surgeon at UWMadison and author of “When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon” talks about his experience with organ donors and recipients.

- Are you a living donor or a transplant recipient, or expecting to be one? Do you remember the experience of being evaluated at the transplant center and listening to all the information, and maybe feeling a little overwhelmed? Living Donor Coordinator Marian Charlton and Patient Coordinator Janet Hiller are two of the most respected voices in transplant, and they will tell you what they want you to know to better understand the process. Anyone who goes through this experience or has a loved one in transplant will want to see these segments.

- Living kidney donors deserve all protections available, from reimbursement for out-of-pocket costs and lost wages to medical coverage for medical issues that may arise months or years after donation. Garet Hil, founder and CEO of the National Kidney Registry, talks about the suite of protections available to living donors through Donor Shield.

-  Are you a kidney patient in need of a donor? Harvey Mysel, a two-time kidney recipient and founder and CEO of the Living Kidney Donor Network, talks about how to have your kidney donor find you.

- Professor Alvin Roth won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work creating the algorithms that contributed to the creation of the “kidney chain”, a development that transformed kidney transplant procedures. Prof. Roth discusseshis work and the business known by the intriguing moniker of “repugnanttransactions.”

- All kidney patients will benefit by watching nephrologist Dr. David Serur talk about kidney disease and what every kidney patient and advocate needs to know to be properly informed about how to deal with renal disease. 

- Non-directed, or altruistic, donors are a rare breed, though we are trying to change that. No one knows the brain of the non-directed donor better than Professor Abigail Marsh, who has been studying non-directed donors for years. If you want to better understand why someone will happily donate a kidney to a stranger, this presentation will help answer that question.  Prof. Marsh is the author of “The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between.”

- If you listen to podcasts, you are probably familiar with “Freakonomics” and its creator, Stephen Dubner. It was the Freakonomics interview with Prof. Roth that set Donor to Donor and NKDO into motion, and our interview with Mr. Dubner will interest anyone who understands “the power of the pod”.

- Jim Gleason is a heart transplant recipient and the president of TRIO, Transplant Recipients International Organization. Mr. Gleason is a motivational speaker who asks the question, “Are you a cookie monster?”

Here's the video of my video