Organ donor campaign targets blacks

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

August 13, 2005

Organ donation was never discussed in John Murrell's home. Black families, he was told, just don't do it.

Doctors would try to kill you for your organs, they said, and besides, God wanted you whole when you're buried.

Then in 2004, Murrell, of Penn Hills, needed a liver.

Now alive because a woman decided to donate her husband's organs, Murrell is part of a group of African-Americans teaming up with federal and state organizations in a new statewide campaign to increase the number of black donors in the state.

That involves getting rid of lingering myths.

The Pennsylvania Organ and Tissue Awareness Program will kick off the campaign Monday with an Organ Donor Barnstorming Bus Tour, an event that will pick up 65 African-Americans affected by donation and transplantation and drive them to Heinz Field for the Eagles-Steelers preseason game.

Two former NFL players, Dwayne Woodruff and Mike Quick, will meet participants and give their support.

During the game, barnstorming participants will appear in Jumbotron messages and an organ donor information booth will be set up at Heinz Field.

The campaign, called Covenant of Life, is the first statewide initiative targeted at the black community, said Shelly Morningstar, a vice president for the Center for Organ Recovery and Education (CORE), a federal agency that collects donations in Western Pennsylvania.

CORE, along with the Eastern Pennsylvanian Gift of Life Donor Program and the Pennsylvania departments of health and transportation, plan to partner with the black religious and business communities in the coming months to help fill the need for black donors.

The need is great, especially because transplant success rates increase when organs are from the recipient's same ethnicity and race, campaign organizers said.

About 25 percent of the 6,500 Pennsylvanians waiting for transplants are black, though blacks only make up 10 percent of the state's population, she said. They also represent about 42 percent of all Pennsylvanians waiting more than five years for a kidney transplant, she said.

One large reason more blacks aren't donors is the myths surrounding organ donation, Morningstar said. Many think that they can't donate for religious beliefs, she said, or that if they're in the hospital, doctors won't try to save their lives because they want the organs.

But most organized religions accept organ donation, and doctors can't touch the organs until the patient dies, Morningstar said.

Murrell never heard anything good about organ donation until he needed a new liver.

"Organ donation is not discussed in black homes," he said. "When you think of donation you think of dying and you don't want to associate with that."

His thinking changed once he received another person's liver. Now the former construction worker uses his story as a way to teach friends and family about life-saving organ donations.

Hilda Crawford, 50, of Penn Hills, has been waiting for a liver transplant since last year.

She's hopeful, she said, but she knows without a donor, she'll die.

To help educate her community and bring in more donors, Crawford is joining the Multicultural Outreach Committee, another branch of the campaign.

"I'm trying to spread the message. Anybody I talk to, I always talk to them about it," she said. "There are a lot of African-Americans who need transplants and a lot of African-Americans who came before me who needed it."

For more information on organ donation visit Pennsylvania Center for Organ Recovery & Education or call 1-800-DONORS-7.

This article posted September 8, 2005.

Organ donor campaign targets blacks

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