How 2 NYU Students Started An Org For Organ Donation Awareness

WEST VILLAGE, NY — Organ donation is not a topic that floats across the mind of many teenagers or college students — but in 2018, two New York University sophomores set out to increase the number of young people thinking about it.

At the time, Chirag Ram and Candice Medina had two major connections — they were both sophomores at Lower Manhattan's NYU and they had both done previous transplant science-related work.

Ram had been working in a research lab for transplants and Medina had worked in a transplant intensive care unit.

While transplant science was a major part of the two Lower Manhattan students' lives, both agreed that the topic was woefully under-discussed compared to other health-related issues.

"With organ donation, it's just not a topic people discuss," Ram told Patch. "And that was the first thing we noticed as we were getting started. It was a topic that around me all the time, but that's because I was sitting in a research lab — people just don't talk about it."

With the goal of educating as many young people as possible about the organ donation process, the duo created ODAC — the Organ Donation Awareness Corporation — which was founded in 2018 and incorporated in 2019.

The organization's goal is to educate students about organ donation, combat false stigmas around being an organ donor, and help people get registered as donors if they so choose.

What started as a two-person initiative in 2018 is now a fully running organization of over 20 people.

The ODAC team is made up of exclusively college students and specializes in talking to younger people about the organ transplant process. The organization has spoken with high school classrooms across New York about transplant science and hosted educational "tabling" events on the topic in places such as Washington Square Park.

"The people that get asked the most to be an organ donor are 16-to-18-year-olds," Ram told Patch. "You've been given no information, no one has ever talked to you about it, and the people that do tend to talk about it spreading misinformation — so you're going to say no."

New York is ranked last in the country in percentage of registered organ donors, even though nearly 10,000 New Yorkers are currently waiting for an organ transplant.

While the ODAC team reiterates stats such as one donor's ability to save up to eight lives, and benefit up to 50 people through the donation of tissues and corneas, the organization also confronts the misconceptions surrounding the process.

Ram lists the most incorrect misconceptions as the fear that if a physician sees you're an organ donor, they are more likely to let you die; that certain pre-existing conditions make you ineligible; and someone's race or gender can disqualify you from being able to become an organ donor.

"There is a very unique relationship between high school students and college students. If someone much older comes to your high school to speak to you, you're more likely not to listen to them," said Divya Kameswaran, an NYU student and the chief commercial officer of ODAC. "But if a college person comes and speaks to you, they're only a couple years older and there's a respect that's already integrated into that relationship that makes high schoolers want to listen."

During a visit to one Long Island high school in 2019, there had been zero people in the last two years to register as an organ donor in the campus's ZIP code. Ram told Patch that from ODAC's lecture alone three or four people registered on the spot, and "we saw the numbers grow drastically in the area in the months after."

Kameswaran says that the organization always looks to be as interactive as possible in catching the attention of young people, even if that means seemingly silly strategies such as bright colors and TikTok dances.

Ram and Kameswaran say it's more coincidence than strategy, but the four people who make up the ODAC leadership team are all NYU students.

Coincidence or not, Ram, who serves as the executive director, acknowledges the importance that the Lower Manhattan area has played in helping ODAC grow.

"For Lower Manhattan as a whole, the vibe of the area encourages activism, even across New York City, Lower Manhattan especially has a 'let's band together, let's make a difference' type of energy," Ram told Patch. "It's a home base that coincidently happened, but it was a pretty good coincidence."

Moving forward, Ram and Kameswaran said that they hope to expand ODAC out of New York and to other parts of the country.

"Our hope is that once you have the facts, you can make the best decision for yourself," Ram said when asked about the push to register people as organ donors. "We need to make sure you have the information, from there forward it's your prerogative to do what's best for you."

"When I started this, I thought it would just be Candice and me hopping from school to school and telling them, 'Hey, look at this really cool stuff, you should register,' and that was my really my vision as a whole," Ram added. "And for that to turn into a 20-plus person team that's growing quickly, I would just say the whole thing has been quite surreal. If I were to point to something specific, I would say that I didn't expect the level of engagement I have gotten at every single high school lecture."

People can find out more about ODAC on its website.