This year, student-athletes in two conferences worked to make a difference by participating in organ-donation awareness programs.

Student-athlete advisory committees at Northeast-10 Conference institutions set up tables at men's and women's basketball games, providing fans with organ-donor cards. Also, the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference's student-athlete advisory committee spearheaded efforts to give fans organ-donor cards at league athletics events at all nine WIAC member schools.

The efforts of student-athlete participants in both conferences targeted awareness. According to organ-donation organizations, more than 70,000 people in the United States are awaiting organ transplant, with 13 people dying each day because of a lack of available organs.

"The Northeast-10 Conference, in conjunction with all 15 campus SAAC groups, was looking for a community-centered project that would have a far-reaching effect throughout our region," said Northeast-10 Commissioner David R. Brunk. "I think we have found in the NE-10 Donor Awareness Project an excellent outreach program that has great humanitarian and public relations benefits. If we help save just one life, the program will be worth all of our collective efforts."

Donor-awareness programs like these make it possible for people to think about and discuss the issue with their family members before an accident makes necessary a last-minute decision. With today's medical technology, transplants such as kidney, heart and liver are both routine and highly successful, organ-donor groups say. And, combination lung, heart-lung and pancreas transplants, as well as the transplants of corneas, bone and other tissue, have become primary therapies for a variety of life-threatening conditions. One person's donated organs and tissues can save or help as many as 50 people.

WIAC Commissioner Gary Karner noted that the impact of such donor programs is potentially enormous.

"When one considers that, for every person who elects to complete one of the donor cards, dozens of people in need of a transplant may have their own lives extended or enriched, it makes this a very satisfying community-service project for our student-athletes," Karner said.

Karner said the WIAC student-athletes got the idea of a donor-awareness program from the American Southwest Conference and approached Ministry Health Care, a Milwaukee-based network of hospitals, clinics and health-care facilities sponsored by the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother. The Ministries, which also is a participant in the WIAC corporate partner program, agreed to sponsor the donor-awareness efforts.

The Northeast-10's efforts were conducted in partnership with the New England Organ Bank.

"This conference-wide effort provides a great opportunity for our SAAC groups to promote awareness of a program that can save lives in need," said Jean Lehoullier, senior associate athletics director at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and administrative SAAC liaison.

For additional information about donor awareness, see www.shareyourlife.org, the Web site for the Coalition on Donation, a nonprofit alliance of national organizations and local coalitions across the United States that is dedicated to educating the public about organ and tissue donation.