To save her brother’s life, Elizabeth is getting in shape. The 38-year-old Kern County, California, resident, whose last name is not being used to ensure the family’s privacy, changed her cooking and her workout routines and has dropped 32 pounds since September 2020. Keck Medicine of USC physicians told her she would be an ideal kidney donor for her older brother—if it weren’t for her weight, which put her out of range to donate safely. Her transformation was aided by a donor wellness program launched last year by the USC Transplant Institute. Transplant sur-
For example, Elizabeth liked to snack on flavored yogurt. Kim advised her to look at the label and see how much added sugar it had. The numbers startled her. “I was like, ‘Wait, I was eating this?’” Kim suggested she switch to plain Greek yogurt and add fresh fruit. “Less sugar, less calories, but you get the same result,” Elizabeth says. “Small changes like that.”
To Give
At Keck Medicine of USC, keeping both organ transplant recipients and their donors ... geons realized that as many as a third of living donors were turned away because they didn’t meet the necessary health requirements. The donor wellness program aims to solve two problems: increase the pool of available living donors while also improving the donor’s own health and well-being. The program is one part of the university’s effort to improve organ transplant outcomes. From helping potential donors get healthy to examining racial disparities to protecting patients from COVID-19, Keck Medicine physicians are searching for more and better ways to keep both donors and recipients healthy and active.
A GAME PLAN FOR SUCCESS Elizabeth’s journey began because she wanted to help her brother, who had been on dialysis for several years. He is the third of the six siblings; Elizabeth is the fifth. The siblings agreed Elizabeth was the best candidate. For one thing, she had one child, a teenage daughter, and didn’t plan to have more. But USC’s transplant coordinators told her that she would have to lose at least 20 pounds to qualify as a viable donor. She dieted and worked out as many as five times a week, but after a year, lab tests showed she was still 10 pounds over the target weight. That’s when Elizabeth was introduced to Susan Kim, a nurse and clinical nutrition and wellness manager. Kim headed up the newly launched donor wellness program, and Elizabeth became one of its first participants. Kim knew she was already working out and counting calories, so she started talking about nutrition.
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The small changes added up, and the pounds started to drop off.
WHEN DEMAND EXCEEDS SUPPLY Elizabeth’s success is part of the vision of the living donor program—an initiative born of frustration. Southern California is one of the most difficult places in the nation to live if you need a new liver or kidney, says Aaron Ahearn, associate director of the liver transplantation program at Keck Medicine of USC. That’s partly because of good trends: A healthier population means fewer people collapsing and dying of heart attacks or strokes, which frees up organs for donation. On the other hand, the large metro area also includes many residents whose health is declining, often the result of living for decades in impoverished and underserved neighborhoods. “You essentially have to be in the ICU in multi-organ failure before you can get a liver transplant,” Ahearn says. One solution to this dilemma is living organ donor transplantation. Keck Medicine has one of the few living donor programs in Southern California, but surgeons were turning away about 30% of candidates. Spring 2022
