To the organ donation and transplantation community:
As we close out another record-breaking year in organ transplantation and embark on what is sure to be a pioneering decade in our national transplant system, it’s the perfect time to introduce United Network for Organ Sharing’s new vision and mission statements.
I’m proud to be a part of a community so passionately committed to this cause and accountable to those whose lives depend on us. We work every day to help people like Omar Garriott, Juniper Gelrod and the countless others whose lives have forever changed thanks to the gift of organ donation. We made great progress in 2019, with 48 organ procurement organizations achieving increases in donation and hospitals performing nearly 40,000 transplants—our seventh consecutive annual increase. We are grateful to the many donors and donor families, whose generous gifts of life made this lifesaving work possible.
Our mission is to unite and strengthen the donation and transplant community to save lives.
Despite these increases, we remain painfully aware of the nearly 113,000 people who are waiting for a transplant. That’s why UNOS works collaboratively with our community to drive improvements in the system. I’m very pleased with the progress we have made toward achieving our mission through innovative efforts in 2019 such as the launch of the Kidney Accelerated Placement project, the first phase of the offer filters pilot project, the launch of a medical image sharing pilot project and much more. All of these efforts get us closer to our common purpose of increasing the number of transplants performed nationwide and saving more lives.
But there is more to be done. As we seek to learn, grow and share our collective expertise in 2020, my hope is that UNOS’ new vision and mission statements will remind our entire community to continue bringing ideas for ways we can get stronger and better together. I encourage you to visit unos.org/community/get-involved to discover how to get involved in 2020.
While our vision and mission statements are new, UNOS has had a steadfast commitment since we were founded to work with our community to save more lives through transplant. Thank you to our community for all that you have done and will do to bring our new mission and vision statements to life. Together, we are UNOS, and your expertise, experience and collaboration are invaluable to our community’s efforts. I appreciate your contributions.
Sincerely,
Maryl Johnson, M.D., UNOS Board of Directors president
