STATEMENT

Media Contact:
Jenny Daigle | [email protected]

AOPO Statement on the Resignation of Patient and Donor Family Representatives from the OPTN Board

McLean, VA (April 9, 2025) — The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO) is concerned by how the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) Board of Directors will function following the mass resignation of patient and donor affairs representatives. Their voices are critical to ensure that as the donation and transplantation system is modernized, we remain focused on creating a patient-centered system. It is unfortunate these representatives do not feel as if their voices are heard or valued by those in leadership at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

We join our colleagues at the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS), who underscored these issues in a statement released earlier today.

The donor representatives’ resignation letter states, “our voices go unheard and our ability to effect meaningful change has been rendered negligible.” They further detail that HRSA’s OPTN Modernization Initiative has overlooked the donation and transplant community’s insights and expertise, writing, “Rather than leveraging this knowledge, HRSA has chosen to dismantle the long-standing public-private partnership in favor of a government-controlled system that has already proven to be less responsive to patient needs and significantly more costly.”

AOPO and numerous other donation and transplant stakeholders – including OPOs, surgeons, patients, donor families and advocate groups – have repeatedly urged HRSA to exercise its authority and responsibility to align our national system to save more lives.

The United States has the best organ donation and transplant system in the world thanks to the patient-centered governance, transparency, and stakeholder collaboration that has driven it since the OPTN’s inception. We call on HRSA to protect those principles so that our system can continue serving the best interests of donors, transplant recipients and their families.