Press release: Newly-awarded grant promotes financial assistance for living organ donation

We're excited to be involved in this important work!

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Christina Goalby cgoalby@healthliteracy.media

ST. LOUIS, MO, March 12, 2026

A new, 3-year program funded by a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) seeks to increase awareness of living organ donation and improve access to this lifesaving care.

Living organ donation, where a person donates an organ while alive (most commonly a kidney or part of their liver), can help reduce the severe shortage of organs for transplant. However, many people do not know what living donation is or how it works.

Donating an organ involves numerous medical appointments for evaluation, donation surgery, and follow-up care. Expenses for travel to appointments, lost wages due to missed work, and costs related to care for children or elders can put donation financially out of reach for potential donors.

Living organ donors may be reimbursed by the federal government for certain donation-related expenses.  Since 2007, HRSA has funded the Living Organ Donation Reimbursement Program (LODRP), administered by the National Living Donor Assistance Center (NLDAC), to reimburse eligible living organ donors for qualifying non-medical expenses associated with the donation process, including travel, lost wages, and dependent care.

The new HRSA program, called the Public Education for Living Organ Donation Reimbursement Program (PE-LODRP), will develop a nationwide education and outreach campaign in multiple languages to promote awareness of this reimbursement program and support potential donors as they navigate the steps of becoming a living donor. The program will focus on people and communities who have historically had low participation in living organ donation and may have less access to health information.

PE-LODRP will coordinate closely with NLDAC to help potential living donors understand the process of applying for reimbursement. Around 20 percent of all living donor transplants in the U.S. involve financial support from this program. 

Last month, the bipartisan Honor Our Living Donors (HOLD) Act was signed into law, removing the organ recipient's income as a consideration in determining whether an organ donor may be reimbursed under the program.

“No one who is in need of an organ transplant should go without because a potential living donor does not know about the resources that are available to them,” said Catina O’Leary, Ph.D., President and CEO of Health Literacy Media (HLM), a nonprofit health communication company in St. Louis, Missouri.

O'Leary co-leads the PE-LODRP program with Amy Waterman, Ph.D., Director of Patient Engagement and Education at Houston Methodist Hospital.

Building on proven transplant education resources such as the award-winning Explore Living Donation program and the NKF Cares telephone helpline, the PE-LODRP program will provide education through an interactive website, social media, text messages, email, live help, and access to peer mentors.

“We’re incredibly excited to be able to work at a national level with this support from HRSA,” said Waterman. “Collaborating closely with the professionals there, as well as our other partner organizations, means we can continuously evaluate and improve our efforts. Together, we can ensure that all potential living donors in the country have immediate access to gold-standard education, resources, and support,” she added. 

The program (Public Education for Living Organ Donation Reimbursement Program HRSA-25-083) is funded to run from September 1, 2025 – August 31, 2028.