We are committed to providing our forensic services partners with information on donation and transplantation to help advance donation and improve donation outcomes. Follow the links below to stay abreast of the latest news affecting you.
Gift of Hope, C/MEs Forge New Cooperative Agreement
Gift of Hope and the Illinois Coroners and Medical Examiners Association have forged a new agreement designed to improve communication and encourage greater cooperation among coroners/medical examiners (C/MEs) and organ and tissue procurement organizations like Gift of Hope. The new agreement takes the form of a "memorandum of understanding" that charts a course for C/MEs and Gift of Hope to follow to maximize the recovery of organs and tissue used for transplants. The agreement is expected to reduce refusals for organ donation and make more lifesaving and life-enhancing organs and tissue available to those in need.
Save the Date: 2012 Funeral Service Professionals Seminar
Gift of Hope will host its 2012 continuing education seminar for Illinois funeral and forensic service professionals on Wednesday, April 11, in Schaumburg.
The free, all-day program is an educational resource for funeral directors, embalmers, non-licensed funeral service staff and pre-need counselors and will offer continuing education credits for participation.
Adipose Tissue Now Being Recovered to Create Healing Grafts
Gift of Hope now recovers adipose during the tissue recovery process. Adipose is fatty tissue removed from a donor’s abdominal area and is used to produce tissue products that promote healing in patients with hard-to-repair injuries like bone fractures. The tissue is rife with so-called “mesenchymal stem cells,” which take their signals from surrounding cells to form cartilage, skin and bone and other cell types depending on where they are introduced. AlloSource, our tissue partner, uses recovered adipose to create a live cell bone graft substitute called AlloStem®.
To learn more about adipose and its use in life-enhancing tissue transplants, download this AlloSource presentation on AlloStem® or watch this informative video posted on Allograft Possibilities, AlloSource’s award-winning tissue education Web site.
Take a Virtual Tour of Our In-House
Recovery Suite
Gift of Hope now performs organ recoveries in our In-House Organ Recovery Suite in Itasca, expanding on the In-House Tissue Recovery Program we have been operating since 2006. The In-House Organ Recovery Program is designed to maximize donation opportunities and make more lifesaving organs available for transplantation. Our In-House Organ Recovery Suite includes:
- Three operating rooms
- Two ICUs
- A perfusion lab
- An ICU lab
- A histocompatibility lab
- A telepathology lab
Assess Juvenile Cartilage in Child Death Cases
Pathologists and coroners/medical examiners are asked to assess knee cartilage during autopsy examinations conducted on young people to increase the number of donation opportunities for families who lose a young loved one.
Wet Lab Held for Mortuary Science Students
Gift of Hope conducted its second wet lab of 2011 for Worsham College of Mortuary Science students on December 13. Students attend the labs to see how tissue recovery and funeral service professionals work together when organ and tissue donors are involved.
Adams, Philpot Honored as “Lifesaving Partners”
Jack Adams, CFSP, MBIE, an embalming instructor at Worsham College of Mortuary Science in Wheeling, III., and Thomas Philpot, DPM, Lake County (Indiana) Coroner, were among 16 individuals, hospitals and health systems Gift of Hope honored as "lifesaving Partners" earlier this year for their commitment to organ and tissue donation.
