A new club raises awareness about organ donations in hopes of encouraging people to become donors.
By Elianna Novitch
At the age of 9, University of Iowa student Emmalyn Brown became the recipient of a liver transplant after her body’s immune system attacked her liver. Brown had a disease known as autoimmune hepatitis.
“They don’t really know why it all happened. My immune system just went haywire,” Brown said. “I was a perfectly healthy kid until I turned yellow one day and had jaundice. I received my transplant all of two weeks later.”
Brown has been involved with advocating for organ donation with her mother and friends that have also received transplants ever since she received her liver.
“The donation concept can be really hard to grasp; it was especially hard when I was younger. I remember my dad trying to explain it all to me after I woke up from surgery,” Brown said. “They tried to explain that someone else had made a sacrifice and given this gift to me. It was a really hard thing to grasp and still is to some extent.”
UI sophomore Brown recently started a club called Students for Organ Donation at Iowa. The goal of the club is to raise awareness about organ donation.
“I really hope that we can spread the word about why people should consider being organ donors and that we can confront misconceptions about organ donation so that people are more educated about it,” UI student Sean Conrad said.
Conrad is a member of the Students for Organ Donation at Iowa. Even before joining the club, Conrad was involved with work involving organ donation. His mother works at the Iowa Donor Network and Conrad has worked as an intern there a few summers.
“When I was a young child, my mom actually donated a kidney to someone, and that was a very inspiring thing to me,” Conrad said. “I got to see a relationship form between her and her recipient, and that had a big impact on me, too.”
The club hopes to work with the Iowa Donor Network on some events throughout the semester.
“There are 125,000 people nationwide on the waiting list at any given time and between 600 to 700 in Iowa,” said the Iowa Donor Network public outreach manager Tony Hakes. “[Donors] can save up to nine lives and heal the lives of hundreds more through organ tissue donation.”
Hakes said he feels that the club can motivate their peers to consider becoming donors.
“I think that students respond well when they receive information from their peers because they are more relatable to them,” Hakes said. “Also when you have recipients sharing their stories about how they wouldn’t be where they are today without their donation, that can really motivate people as well.”
Hakes said Iowa ranks well on the overall percentage of adults registered as donors, unlike where Brown comes from in Ohio.
“Where I’m from has some of the lowest donor rates in the country because people just aren’t educated about it. The more information a community has about organ donation, the higher the donor rates are in that community,” Brown said. “And that’s what we really want to do with this club: to educate people on it and allow them to make that decision themselves.”
Brown said the club plans to host a variety of activities in April because it is Donate Life Month.
“[Being an organ donor] is one of the most selfless things you can do as an individual. It is very beneficial to society as a whole and costs almost little to nothing for you,” Conrad said. “You just have to check a box, and you could change someone’s living situation.”
