New York Organ Donor Network Names New Members to Its Board of Directors and Medical Board - September 4, 2003
The New York Organ Donor Network, the organ procurement organization serving the Greater New York metropolitan area, has announced the following new appointments to its board of directors and medical board:
Alan Benvenisty, M.D., 49, Chief of the Transplant Program and Professor of Clinical, General and Vascular Surgery at St. Luke’s - Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York, NY, has been appointed to the New York Organ Donor Network’s board of directors. Until recently, Dr. Benvenisty was Professor of Clinical Surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Director of Vascular Surgery at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and Associate Director of Renal Transplantation at Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York. Since 1995, Dr. Benvenisty served as the Chairman of the Kidney/Pancreas Committee of the New York Organ Donor Network. He also served on the Consent and Donor Process Sub-Committee of the Donor Network’s Medical Board.
Debbie Delgado-Vega, 40, the founder and CEO of the Latino Organization for Liver Awareness (LOLA) in The Bronx, NY, has rejoined the New York Organ Donor Network’s board of directors. Ms. Delgado-Vega, who received a liver transplant in 1995 after waiting two and half years on the waiting list, first served on the board from 1996 to 2000. LOLA is the first national bilingual and bicultural voluntary organization dedicated to raising awareness, prevention, education and treatment referral services to the Latino community who suffer from liver disease and who may need a liver transplant. LOLA also promotes organ and tissue donation. In June 2002, Ms. Delgado-Vega received the American Institute for Public Service “Jefferson Award” founded by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Senator Robert Taft, Jr. and Sam Beard. The award recognizes individuals whose accomplishments validate the idea that civic engagement can contribute to a healthy society.
Michael R. Marvin, M.D., 36, Liver Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgeon, and Assistant Professor of Surgery at New York Medical College, Westchester Medical Center, in Hawthorne, NY, has been appointed to the Medical Board of the New York Organ Donor Network.
New York Organ Donor Network: Founded in 1978, the New York Organ Donor Network celebrates its 25th anniversary this year as the second largest of the nation’s nonprofit, federally designated organ procurement organizations (OPOs). It is responsible for the recovery of organs and tissues for transplantation, and public and professional education efforts for a culturally and ethnically diverse population of 13 million in the Greater New York metropolitan area. The Donor Network serves Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn the Bronx, Staten Island, Long Island, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester, and also Pike County, PA. It works closely with nine transplant centers and 112 hospitals in the New York metropolitan area. The Donor Network is a member of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), which oversees the national transplant waiting list as well as all transplant centers and OPOs in the United States.
The Need: More than 82,000 Americans are waiting for organ transplants, of which approximately 8,200 are in the Greater New York metropolitan area. Each day, 17 Americans die waiting for organ transplants, and a new name is added to the national waiting list every 13 minutes. Thousands more need life-saving and life-improving tissues such as corneas, skin and bone.
For more information, contact Martin Woolf, 212-870-3960 or mwoolf@nyodn.org
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