COVID-19 pandemic ignites collaboration in the transplant community

As COVID-19 cases began increasing globally, conversations among health care providers about the pandemic’s potential impact on transplant started to emerge.

Within a few days, organ donation and transplant communities from around the world assembled to collaborate on a webinar series sharing real-world, global experiences for the organ donation and transplant community. Along with United Network for Organ Sharing, participating organizations included:

• American Society of Transplantation 
• Association of Organ Procurement Organizations 
• American Society of Transplant Surgeons 
• North American Transplant Coordinators Organization 
• United Network for Organ Sharing
• Canadian Society of Transplantation 
• European Society of Transplantation 
• International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation 
• The Transplant Society 

The societies launched their first live, collaborative webinar “COVID-19: Organ Donation and Transplant Town Hall,” on March 23, and the 1,000 available seats filled up within a few hours. Collaboration continued over the following weeks with three additional webinars, including the most recent webinar on May 11, covering topics ranging from:

• Presentation, diagnosis, treatment and prevention
• Getting to transplant
• Operational issues
• Screening donors and candidates
• Protecting the workforce
• Ethical issues

The societies aren’t done yet, with future plans to produce more collaborative webinars on navigating COVID-19, as well as topics unrelated to the pandemic.

Read more about the COVID-19 pandemic and collaboration within the transplant community.