About Waitlist Zero

Goals

Dramatically increase living donation by:

  • Educating the public about the safety, convenience, and life-saving potential of living kidney donation.
  • Ensuring that excellent transplant education is guaranteed to all medically eligible patients and their families.
  • Piloting innovative practices and replicating those that have the most promise for saving more lives.
  • Launching a Living Donation Breakthrough Collaborative to dramatically increase living donation by disseminating transplant center best practices.
  • Mobilizing kidney donors as advocates for themselves and their loved ones.
  • Organizing the community of those interested in increasing transplantation to effectively advocate for better transplant policy.
  • Passing comprehensive state and federal legislation to achieve our vision of transplant support.

Principles

Commitment to Kidney Patients and Their Families

  • Saving lives should be the highest goal of transplant policy; any policy that interferes with that must meet a high burden of proof.
  • Ending the wait list is morally urgent. Every day that passes without progress is unacceptable.

Fairness to Donors

  • No donor should expect to be worse off for having donated.
  • Donors should be proud to have donated, and society should honor the compassion all donors share.

Donor Equality

  • Kidney donation should not be more of a burden on the poor than the rich.
  • Kidney donors should be a diverse group drawn from all segments of society.

Patient Equality

  • Patients should have equal access to transplantation regardless of their wealth or status.
  • Patients should receive consistent and comprehensive education about all treatment option and the outcomes for each.
  • Patients seeking a transplant should not feel they are a burden to their loved ones.

Mission Statement

Founded by living kidney donors, WaitList Zero is devoted to representing donors and ending the waiting list by increasing living donation.

Vision

We envision a nation where no one dies because of a shortage of available kidney transplants; a world of transplant support where it is easy for patients to ask for a kidney and easy for donors to give; where donors are honored as public servants and never expect to be worse off for having saved the life of another.