Alaska Legislature: Lunch & Learn Presentation: Life Center Northwest, 4/8/26, 12:01pm

loss and death was his ability to become an organ donor.

He's incredibly generous person he had a really hard time saying no sometimes to a fault and so when I think about his ability to continue to give of himself in his death as he did in his life it's exactly what he would have wanted and it was a way for him to continue to be him in spite of a horrible horrible tragedy.

We were not married and his family had some very

sharing beliefs around organ donation and so one of the things that I do want to share is just the importance of talking with your family members if you are a registered donor and want to be a registered donor there was one family member of Aaron's in particular who was actively fighting his declaration to be an organ donor he didn't understand all of the parts of the process he was believed that maybe the doctors didn't do everything to try to save him and they

And they absolutely did.

I was there the whole time.

I think they took steps that they knew might not have any help at all, but they had to try because they wanted to create space for a miracle.

This particular family member thought that organ donation was a for-profit industry in the U.S. and it is not. It is a non-profit industry.

And at the end of the day, this particular family member was just having a hard time accepting that Aaron was gone.

And so highly, highly recommend that you have.

have conversations with your family.

Life Center Northwest was a wonderful partner in all of that process.

Aaron's timeline to his donation operation was extended because Life Center Northwest was giving space to the family.

They're not in the business of making families tragedies worse and so they they worked tirelessly to help educate to provide resources and to just have some really meaningful conversations to help.

help Aaron's ability to be a donor like he wanted to be honored and for the family to be as okay with it as possible.

So I'm incredibly proud of the fact that Aaron had the opportunity to extend the lives of others.

It is always tragic that he's gone and I miss him a lot even to this day and what I always tell people is that it's incredibly tragic.

project, but also really beautiful that he died doing one of the things that he loved most.

I'm happy to answer any questions as a family member who has gone through this, who's really seen the nuts and bolts of all of the steps that go into declaring someone brain dead and through the donation process.

And please ask any questions that you have of Ashley as she talks through the experience,

but thank you.

Thank you, Courtney,

and thank you for being willing to share.

One of the things that we appreciate is that it's not always easy to continue to share your story over and over again,

and I think it takes a lot of courage and bravery,

and yeah,

to be able to continue to do that,

so thank you, Courtney.

So who are we?

Life Center Northwest,

we are a nonprofit organization.

We're federally designated and federally funded.

And our job is to save lives through deceased organ and tissue donation.

We,

our mission is to save lives.

We cannot change the path of an individual's prognosis when they are admitted to the hospital and are not going to survive their injuries.

But what we can do is give hope and healing to families like

like Courtney,

and honor the wishes of an individual and or honor the wishes of a family for donation to take place for lives to be saved.

We are one of 55 organ procurement organizations,

sometimes called OPOs across the country,

and interestingly enough we have the largest geography out of any OPO in the country.

So we serve Montana,

Alaska,

North Idaho,

and Washington,

which makes us very unique.

unique because we have to navigate different geographies and terrain and vast distances as well.

So what our primary focus is is to orchestrate deceased organ and tissue donation,

support donor families like Courtney and Aaron's family,

and then also educate communities throughout the service area that we have.

We have over 325 staff members.

throughout our entire area.

The majority of our staff are clinical focused with a smattering of administrative and leadership staff.

Currently we have about 11 staff in Alaska and are kind of always growing that as needed and then the rest of the staff are kind of peppered throughout Idaho,

Montana with the bulk of our staff in Washington and that's just based on where the majority of donation acts.

action activity does take place.

We have just over 230 hospitals that we partner with very closely,

and just additional facts regarding kind of population and communities that we serve, including the indigenous tribes that we're also well connected with.

Our team member backgrounds,

as I mentioned, most of us are clinical in focus,

MDs, nurses,

respiratory therapists,

we hire folks who were former paramedics or EMTs,

a handful of social workers,

myself included,

and then hospital administrators,

industry executives,

and military veterans kind of round out the team that we have.

We have one thing to note is that tissue and cornea donation recovery and donation in Alaska is actually served by Life Alaska donor services you may be familiar with their logo or have seen them around they're based out of anchorage and they also manage the registry in the state of Alaska.

We work really closely with them we partner with them we actually host an event annually with them every year and we partner with them to support.

support families that we both share.

So it's an organization that I just wanted to flag.

I think sometimes questions come up about registry and Life Center,

we are not the ones that manage the registry.

Life Alaska does.

So a couple of some donation facts.

One donor has the ability to save up to eight lives through organ donation.

And even more through tissue and cornea donation.

We usually share that one individual one tissue donor has the ability to save up to seven not save excuse me enhance the lives of up to 75 individuals through tissue donation.

There are currently more than 100,000 people on the waiting list.

for an organ throughout the United States. We have about 2,000 of those in our service area,

and based on the number that I recently pulled,

there are currently 163 Alaskans who are waiting for a transplant.

Nationwide, an average of 17 people die each day waiting for an organ,

and every 10 minutes somebody is added to the transplant waiting list.

The biggest and most important fact is that less than 1% of

and if people are actually able to be donors.

So in order to be a donor,

which I'll talk about in a little bit more,

there has to be a certain set of circumstances that allows for donation to take place.

We in this room are more likely to need an organ than we are to become an organ donor based on the rarity of the process.

So out of those 130 Alaskans who are waiting for an organ,

139 of those need a kidney.

And something about our service area in particular is three out of the four states that we serve do not have transplant programs, which includes Alaska. So anybody that lives in the state would need to fly to the lower 48,

usually to Washington to receive a transplant.

This also makes us incredibly unique because we are obligated to work even harder to ensure that organs are getting outside of those three of our four states quickly and efficiently to make sure that they're saving the lives of others.

Some other frequently asked questions that we receive,

and you might have these as well, is

Who can be an organ donor?

Again,

it's incredibly rare that donation actually takes place.

However,

anyone can register to be an organ donor,

and what we tell people is to never rule yourself out, regardless of your health status or even of your age.

We come alongside the hospital after someone has been declared to not survive their injuries, and then we do an additional assessment to determine organ.

organ suitability.

How would someone become an organ donor?

To be eligible to donate organs,

an individual must die in a hospital and on ventilated life support.

So if somebody,

if I was in a vehicle accident and the paramedics showed up at the scene and they were not able to resuscitate or get a heartbeat for me on the side of the road and I was declared dead at the scene,

I would not be eligible to become an organ donor.

It would only be that I was transported to the hospital,

put on a ventilator, and then the hospital team would also continue to do everything and anything that they can to save my life before donation would even begin to be discussed after all avenues were exhausted.

And then the last question that we get a lot is, will the medical team work to save a life even if the patient is a registered donor?

Yes,

100% yes.

Medical teams have no idea.

about your personal decision to be a registered donor or not.

They're not looking at anyone's driver's license.

There's no database that they have access to,

and their job is to save that individual's life.

Courtney shared earlier today that the medical team that was caring for Aaron probably went above and beyond what was even

possible because they were trying to work so hard to ensure that this young 26-year-old had a chance.

It's only after everything is exhausted that the medical team and the hospital has a requirement to notify the organ procurement organization that there's someone who could potentially be an organ donor.

This is a kind of high-level overview of the donation process,

and I'll just kind of walk you through it relatively quickly.

So if a patient, again,

is admitted to a hospital setting and everything that was possible by the medical team was exhausted,

then a referral would take place to the organ procurement organization,

and a medical evaluation would ensue by LifeCenter or the OPO and in partnership with the hospital.

It is the hospital physician and medical team that actually declares death.

That is not something that an organ procurement organization has any ability to do.

After that medical evaluation occurs,

then we begin to have conversations with the family about donation.

After those discussions occur and if we are moving forward with donation,

then we begin identifying matching offers for the organs that have potential to be transplanted. We then move into a surgical recovery. It's very similar to an operating procedure that any of us

may have had or will potentially have in the future.

And then transplant occurs and then the family is supported by a team of specialists providing grief and bereavement support afterwards.

This process is very similar and standard with all organ procurement organizations across the entire country.

I just like to emphasise this or b um share this visual, um reminds me of kind of a metro system, underground metro system. The um organ procurement process is incredibly complex and there are multiple entities involved at any given time. So on a given one individual case, there can be upwards of a hundred and fifty people involved with facilitating the organ donation process as well as

as the transplantation process from the donor hospital,

the donor family,

the transplanting team,

and in some instances we could have a different transplanting team for every single organ that an individual is donating.

So that could be up to five different transplanting teams and when you kind of add all of that up it's a handful of people and this is also done in a very

a comp um condensed period of time. There's only so much time that a that an organ can be um viable for a transplant and so sometimes we're doing this in the span of 12 hours to 24,

sometimes 72. Um in Aaron's case it was another extra couple of days on top of that but that was also to allow Aaron and the family time to kind of process and come around to the idea that he had

He had made his wishes known.

Our primary job throughout this entire process is to support that family.

This looks very different based on the family's wishes and what they would find beneficial.

Some families spend the entire time with their loved one at the hospital.

Other families will have conversations with us and then they will make the decision that they want to leave the hospital and they leave their loved one.

loved one their person and our hand hands to care for just as we would care for our own family members

We have trained professionals having these conversations with families throughout the entire,

again,

process.

And we introduce opportunities for memory making. We set up honor walks. You may have seen some of those on social media or on the news.

We arrange for flag raisings.

Just any way that we can be really intentional about.

about honoring that person and the legacy that they are living behind.

After donation takes place, we are continuing to provide grief and bereavement support,

sharing donation outcomes,

inviting families to events.

We have support groups and workshops.

We have a donor family advisory council,

which Courtney is graciously a part of, where it's an opportunity for us to learn from donor families in terms of how we can improve.

can improve our practices.

And then we also facilitate letters between donor families and recipients if both parties would like to exchange those.

And that photo on the bottom of the service men and women lining up was actually taken at a hospital. That photo was taken at a hospital here in Alaska.

That individual,

I think there was well over 200 folks that attended that honor walk to honor that donor.

Some national rates for donation and transplantation in 2025.

Last year, over 16,000 deceased donors gave selflessly,

and just over 46,000 transplants were performed, which was actually a two percent increase from 2024.

An average of 134 transplants are performed each and every day around the country,

which I think is just remarkable that this is all happening in such a,

I just can't even wrap my head around the fact that that many transplants are occurring every single day and we have that many people that are dedicated to doing this really amazing work.

So this just gives you an example or shows,

depicts kind of the growth in donation over the past 10 years.

The one thing you'll notice that in 2025 we did have a decline in the number of donors.

However,

Even though that occurred,

we still had more transplants than we did the year before.

So what that is showing us is that we,

because of technology,

because of the hard work that both the OPOs and the transplant centers are doing,

we're actually transplanting more organs per donor than we ever have before.

One of the reasons for why this number has actually declined,

we believe has declined,

and this is...

this is kind of a national feeling, is that the sentiment around organ donation over the past year has not been portrayed in a positive way.

And it's having an impact on people's willingness to register or to remove themselves from the registry.

And the reasons why this is occurring may not always be based in fact. In reality, I think some of the things that are being portrayed are not an accurate depiction of the process.

And we're not doing enough to kind of highlight and emphasize stories like Courtney's that really speak to the amazing work that is occurring.

So for us at Life Center over the past decade we've continued to have a notable increase in donation.

119% growth in the last 10 years.

We had a little bit of a dip just around kind of the tail end of COVID but we have rebounded from that and are continuing to save more lives.

I don't believe it's in this deck but we did over 1,300 transplants last year which was

incredibly remarkable and was an increase between 2024 and 2025.

For Alaska, we have,

this is a known thing,

there's variability in the number of donors that we have each year.

We do not have,

we do not, we are not able to predict or we're not able to make people die.

We don't want actually people to die. We want people to live.

And so we are going to naturally see variability,

which is not outside the norm.

But I think what's really positive is that

342 donors over the last 10 years have given life to others, which I think is really something to be proud of.

And in that, over a thousand lives have been saved over the last decade directly from Alaskan donors.

Again,

something to be really proud of.

One of the reasons why we're here is to talk and just kind of bring awareness to the fact that April is Donate Life Month.

This is just an opportunity to really emphasize and give gratitude to the donors and donor families for all that they have given and just to also celebrate the lives that have been saved and healed through donation. If you have any questions or want any materials about Donate Life Month,

I'm happy to share them. If there's anything that you would like to...

I have um help in terms of spreading awareness. Please let me know and I can provide um content,

verbiage, etcetera.

And then the other thing I just wanted to share is that the Governor's Gift of Life Award ceremony is something that we've done. This will be the third year. In Alaska we're really proud that this partnership is in place with the Governor's office and it's an opportunity to honour all of the organ donors from the previous year. So we host this event at the end of May and the Lieutenant Governor will be joining us this year, Courtney will be there as well and speaks to the families.

And it's also an opportunity for families to get together and receive support from one another.

Ryan is going to help share some invites with everyone.

We'd love to have you all attend if you're able to in the Anchorage area at the end of the month in May.

And then just some closing notes,

you know, donation awareness is really at the core of what we do in terms of education throughout our communities.

Talking about donation and ensuring that folks, as Courtney mentioned,

know what people's, what your wishes are in terms of donation is the key.

And it's what we've really been focusing our efforts on, both locally and kind of nationally.

As was mentioned,

you can sign up by renewing your driver's license and we are always a resource to anyone if any questions come through from constituents about donation.

I'm happy to be a resource for anyone.

And then I just wanted to share Jenny this last slide. This is Alaska recipient Jenny Fagerstrom.

She received a lung transplant a handful a number of years ago.

She's now on our advisory board,

our Life Center Northwest advisory board,

has just been like an amazing individual to partner with and to work with. She spoke at a number of our events,

and she speaks so passionately about her experience. She

was very sick for a very long period of time and ended up going down to the University of Washington and was there for a number of months before she received her lung transplant.

And she has a beautiful and huge family.

And I think one of the things that is so impactful about donation is that it doesn't just impact the recipient,

the individual that received that organ,

but it has a ripple effect.

on her children,

on her future grandchildren,

on her communities,

on the work that she does.

And so it spreads far beyond just that one individual.

And similar to, you know, Courtney shared that Aaron saved four lives.

That's four families,

that's four communities that donation had a really profound impact on. So as rare as it is, it's so important to

have awareness of it and also to be having those conversations with families about the generosity.

I think that is everything for me.

I welcome,

and Courtney and I welcome any questions that you might have about Life Center,

about donation.

Kind of a two-part question. You're talking about the steps it takes, and I imagine that there's some timeline at which point an organ may become unviable. And is that—

are there efforts to make that

is there—

last longer, go faster? And then also the second part of my question is, is that part of the reason you can't take an organ from someone who's lying on the side of the road? And, you know, like, what's the reasoning behind some of that aspect?

Yeah, great. Great question.

Great question.

The—

sorry.

No, it's all good.

And I'll answer the second question first.

So in order for an organ to be viable for transplant,

it has to have oxygen and blood.

It has to be perfused.

So when an individual is admitted to the hospital and they're put on a ventilator, that is helping them breathe to ensure that that oxygen and blood is continuing to perfuse through the organs themselves. Organs have different time timelines that they can live outside of the body.

bodies.

Kidneys, when we recover kidneys,

often we're putting them on a pump, a machine to help continue to perfuse them.

So we can actually recover kidneys and then put them on a pump and they can be transplanted, sometimes up to 36 hours later.

And what that does is that ensures that we're able to find recipients for those kidneys and that the organ does not go to waste.

Because that is one of the things that we hear from families the most.

We want you to help save as many lives as possible and we never want anything to not to be transplanted.

Hearts and lungs can only live outside of the body for so long.

A number of years ago there was a and it's now being used quite often but a device was was created it was called heart in a box where you could basically put a heart in a box and do similar things.

things perfuse it so that it could be outside of the body a little bit longer but it still only has about six to eight hours before it would be seen deemed unviable here I'm really proud to be able to share this we have recovered and transplanted organs here in Alaska and transplanted them in North Carolina Boston hearts and lungs in particular so we work really hard to ensure that we get those organs if we can't get

can't get them within our service area to people that need them so that they don't go to waste.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I had a question about how, so you talked about what happens after a person dies and their organs are going to be donated.

How easy is it to like opt into becoming an organ donor?

I think that I'm an organ donor that I opted in and that I've got a little heart on my ID.

Is that all that it takes?

And are there efforts to make it easier for people to opt in to be an organ donors?

I think some states it's like an opt-in versus an opt-out.

opt-out thing.

I'm not sure how that works in Alaska.

And also, do you know how many people in Alaska are like opted in to be organ donors if they were to be in an accident or what percentage of Alaskans are on that list?

questions. Um so if you register at the DMV and say yes I want to be an organ donor then you are automatically on the national donor registry database. So that's all you need to do. It's very simple. Um you can also register at Donatelife America.

your choice to be an organ donor.

There's a couple of different ways.

Some healthcare entities are now adding if there's a MyChart component to your electronic medical record,

there's actually a way to indicate to say that you want to be a register,

to register as well.

Now a caveat to that, your medical team does not know what your decision is,

it's just that the electronic medical record is sending you to the site to register.

So it's very, very simple.

We have an opt-in system in the United States,

and that is a preferred method as opposed to an opt-out system.

We as a country value freedom and the right to choose.

And so by opting in,

you're making that decision for yourself. If we were to create an opt-out system,

what that would do is if you opted out,

your family would not.

not be able to change that decision.

And that would actually have a negative effect on donation.

So what that means is if you, let's say I died, but I opted out, but my family really wanted me to be an organ donor,

I couldn't be one because I had already made that declaration.

Whereas an opt-in system,

if you haven't registered as an organ donor,

your family gets to make that decision for you.

So it actually opens up.

opens up the possibility of donation far more than it would the other way.

So there are countries around the world that have an opt out system and it's not as kind of successful as we have here in the United States.

So and then I can't remember your last question.

Oh, yes.

How many people? I do not have that number off the top of my head,

so I apologize for that,

but I know that it's more than 50%. So I,

within,

and the challenge with registry throughout the entire United States, not just our service area,

is that every single state does it differently and every single state has regulations in terms of how much information they're willing to share with the organ procurement organization.

And when you add in a national database and they don't talk to each other,

like the DMV doesn't necessarily talk to Donate Light America,

the numbers aren't accurate.

So we can get a ballpark figure.

What I will say is that in the service area that we serve,

it's more than half of people are registered to be organ donors.

That includes Alaska.

Hi. Thanks for coming today. So one question I had is how do you guys organise the recipient list? Is it kind of a first in first out, state specific, compatibility specific? And the thing I'm thinking is with regards to kidney failure.

The guy who has access to a dialysis machine can buy time. A guy who may not have access to that clinical infrastructure is gonna probably need it a lot faster. I think an example would be it's probably harder to access dialysis and other clinical infrastructure in some of the rural regions of the state, and they can't quite buy that time. So could you guys kinda touch up on that and kinda describe how recipient lists are formed and the kind of dynamic at play there?

Um unfortunately I won't be able to answer the full question because that is outside of our purview so um the uh recipient waiting list the recipient placement on waiting list is completely separate from the organ procurement organisation and that is designed to ensure at

ethics.

We cannot be involved in that process.

We do not have any determination over who is listed and why,

but you are right. An individual that doesn't have access to health care may be in more need, but that is ultimately up to the transplanting team and the transplanting center to make those determinations.

When we are matching organs,

what we are given is the transplant waiting list through UNOS, which is

is an acronym that just went out of my head but it'll come back to me. So UNOS is the third party vendor that manages that list.

United network of organ sharing see I knew it would come back. And what they do is they give us the list and we start going through it. Who is the closest and we start contacting the transplant centres. There are times that we will call upwards of fifty transplanting programmes to place a kidney in particular. But we don't have any say.

over the process of listing that's separate from us

Thank you. It's a really great presentation. So thank you guys for putting this on.

Between the is there generational difference for organ donors or is it a pretty equal distribution for who signs up to be an organ donor?

question, I could surmise.

I think what we are seeing right now in the landscape is actually cultural differences.

So not necessarily age differences. That being said,

there have been a lot of negative incorrect media attention on donation and a lot of it is being fueled within TikTok.

And we know, I think, that a lot of the generation that's following TikTok is very influential and are being swayed potentially incorrectly about the realities of donation.

I think there,

it's hard, we don't get a lot of data from the DMVs because that is confidential and private.

So usually what we get from them is kind of, we may get age, but usually it's just zip code in terms of where these people live.

So it's hard to know. I think one of the things that we get a lot of questions about in an older demographic is, well, you don't want my organs because they're not good anymore.

and I'm too old and that is not the truth anymore I mean we've recovered or we just recovered a liver from an individual who's 75 years old it's was transplanted successfully the recipient's doing fantastic so we tell people to not rule themselves out but I think a lot of people towards that and latter stages of their life start thinking about end-of-life planning and kind of wills etc and they

they start thinking well I should probably remove that because you're not going to want my organs anyways and that's not necessarily the truth anymore so I didn't fully ask answer your question because I don't have all of the data but there are some nuances that we're starting to see in terms of ages and when we think about how we support our communities and educate our communities we're also keeping that in mind that it's not just about cultural differences but that

that age is also playing a factor as well.

I think we have time for one more.

One more. Does anyone have—

Serena?

Cool.

Sure.

Take it away.

Especially because I missed part of it, but I was wondering to talk about those under 18.

So first of all, voter registration or excuse me, donor registration.

Do you have to have— do you have to be 18 to do that? And then if that's the rule for children or under 18, who decides? And are those organs viable or good? Where do they go? And how does that affect maybe your statistics and if there's a difference between under 18 in terms of

how many are on the registry? Because I don't know if they can be and that kind of thing. So I'm just curious about that.

So it's state by state dependent.

So some states you can register for your permit at 15 or 15 and a half and you can actually indicate on your driver's license that you want to be a registered donor at that time.

However,

your parent,

your legal guardian still has the ability to still has to make that decision for you still right there.

If we are supporting a 15 year old who said yes, I want to be an organ donor.

we would still look to that family to make that final decision.

Once you hit 18,

it is a legally binding decision.

You have made that.

But before that,

it's a little gray.

So many parents, we are in the process of supporting a family. We're going to be doing a beautiful video of this mom and her daughter died at the age of 15,

a couple weeks before she died.

She had gotten her learner's permit.

met and her and her mom had had that conversation about donation so she knew what her daughter wanted so when we looked to her and said you know tell us what you think about donation said oh Moe and I just talked about that yes I want her to be a donor so it's a little bit gray what I will say is that you know there are a lot of kids that are on the waiting list for organs and size actually matters for those children and sometimes for very young children

And so we cannot transplant a heart from a six-foot-two woman into a five-year-old girl because the size wouldn't allow for it. So there is a need for pediatric donors and it's a very hard discussion to have with families.

I think for any of us that have children,

that is a very hard thing to wrap our heads around.

So we have to come at those conversations very sensitive.

And we have to respect ultimately it is that family's decision in terms of what they want to do.

And we also know that their children have the ability to save lives of potentially other children. So not all children's organs will get transplanted into a child.

Sometimes a child may donate their kidneys and both kidneys will be transplanted into one individual.

So there's a lot of kind of science behind it that makes every case a little bit unique.

So yeah.

Sweet. Thank you to our presenters who came and taught us a lot today.

Thank you everyone for coming. So there's still a lot of sandwiches if anyone wants to take a couple back to their offices for their coworkers. Go crazy.

Want to close anything else up?

I don't think so. Thank you all very much.

Cool.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you for the questions.