Why this initiative?

California’s percentage for registered organ/tissue donors is well below the national average of 50% and it is imperative that we drive up this percentage so we can gift lives to those in need.Read More »

What is organ/tissue donation?

Organ and tissue donation is the process of taking healthy organs and/or tissues from a donor (either living or deceased) and transplanting the organs and/or tissues into another person.Read More »

Program Objectives

Our objective is to increase the number of registered organ/tissue donors in California and research new methods in precision medicine to improve conversion and success rates of organ transplants.Read More »

Timeline for Gifting Lives Initiative

  • Inception of Idea

    Rhea’s idea for this initiative began in early September 2017. As a teen who was just starting to get her driving permit, she was glancing over the Drivers’ Ed curriculum and noticed that the form at the DMV asked whether one wanted to be an organ donor without providing much..Read More

  • Launch of Website

    In order for more people to have access to her research and initiative, Rhea created a website. She wanted to make it interactive so that she could understand the views and perspectives of others regarding her thoughts. This led to the idea of creating blogs on her website so that..Read More

  • Legislative Change Proposal

    We advocate for an opt-out system rather than the current opt-in system for the organ donation form at the California DMVs in order to encourage more people to donate, tapping on the psychological phenomenon of “default neglect.” We plan on proposing legislation to our district’s representative for the California Assembly..Read More

  • Present Research about Conversion and Success Rates

    Our initiative is also focused on incorporating precision medicine in order to further fine-tune donor-patient organ matching and improve the conversion rates for organ donation. We will also be investigating the specific immune responses (lymphocyte and antibody mediated mechanisms) to transplanted organs in order to contribute to increasing the success..Read More

  • Release of Phone App

    We plan on creating a phone app for organ donation that will create a global organ donor registry network. Currently, there are many organ donor registry networks for individual nations, but we will attempt to combine a select number of these existing organ donor registries into one global registry.

  • International Evaluation

    We will evaluate the effectiveness of organ retrieval, storage and transplants in the United States and other countries so that we can provide suggestions to their larger organizations on how to better streamline the organ donation process.

Want to register to be an organ donor?

Click Here!