PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The longtime leader of Philadelphia’s Gift of Life Donor Program plans to step down after more than four decades at the helm.
You may not know his name, but you certainly know his work.
Howard Nathan was one of three employees in 1978 when he started at what is now Gift of Life. He offered to work for free for three months to make sure he got hired.
He planned to go to medical school, but “we were on the cutting edge of medicine in transplantation for all these years,” he said, “and I never looked back after I took this job.”
Originally, Howard worked as a transplant coordinator, asking grieving families to consider organ donation.
“When we came into a waiting room in an intensive care unit in the old days, people didn’t know what we were talking about,” he recalled. “Not knowing anything about organ donation or about transplantation, because it hadn’t reached the media the way it has today, was difficult.”
To help ease that process, Nathan and his team focused on outreach, education and legislative lobbying.
Gift of Life is the largest organ procurement organization (OPO) in the country, and the Philadelphia region consistently leads the nation in the number of transplants each year.
Not only did Nathan help make Gift of Life a household name, but he also brought the organ donation conversation to the dinner table, where family members could tell their loved ones their wishes. One of those conversations led to a change in medical policy that has saved thousands of lives.
Fourteen-year-old Michael McVey was on life support after a rope swing accident. Surgeons were ordered to wait until brain activity stopped, which would make the organs unusable. But with help from Nathan and Gift of Life, the McVeys pressed doctors to take his organs as soon as his heart stopped after he was pulled from life support.
“It’s sort of a miracle that because of a mom’s wish, we were able to carry out her wishes of her son to be an organ donor and save three lives, and now it’s saved over 45,000 people’s lives,” Nathan added.
He also helped craft first-of-its-kind legislation in Pennsylvania that changed how hospitals notify OPOs when organs are available.
He said the science and logistics of transplantation have been both difficult and fascinating.
“But it’s really pretty basic: One person giving to another. And you can’t beat that, to have a job that’s better than that,” he said.
Nathan will stay on through the end of the year, then take over as the head of Gift of Life’s Transplant Foundation.
Rick Hasz will replace Nathan as the CEO of Gift of Life. Hasz is currently Gift of Life’s vice president of clinical services. He calls Nathan the “Vince Lombardi of organ donation,” and he looks forward to carrying on the mission of expanding organ donation.