Nudging Organ Donation: Tools to Encourage Organ Availability

November 6, 2020

Organ donation saves and improves lives every day, but there are not nearly enough organ donors to meet the demand for transplantation. In 2019, 19,267 U.S. donors made possible a record-setting 39,718 transplants, but more than 109,000 Americans remain on the organ transplant waiting list. How can this gap be bridged? What might be done to increase participation in the organ donor registry? What lessons might be learned by experience elsewhere?

Please join the Petrie-Flom Center on November 6th for an exploration of these important questions. First, Robert Walmsley University Professor and former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, Cass Sunstein, will discuss how his “nudge theory” might be employed to increase organ donation. In a follow-up discussion moderated by James Lytle, Fellow at the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, Phil Walton, Project Lead for Deemed Consent Legislation for the National Health Service’s Blood and Transplant Division, will share how Wales and England have sought to increase donation through an “opt-out” organ donor registry and Alexandra Glazier, President and CEO of New England Donor Services, the nonprofit organization responsible for organ donation for in the region, and on the Board of Directors for the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network that oversees transplantation nationwide, will present on the American complexities of the organ donation system, including opportunities to increase organ donation rates.

For more information, visit our website at
https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/ev...