Nashville is on the leading edge of organ transplants.
For one, Vanderbilt University Medical Center is among the busiest transplant hospitals in the nation. Last year, it performed 739 transplants, putting it among the top five transplant centers in the country. A team of Vanderbilt doctors even traveled all the way to Alaska to retrieve a donated heart, a 10-plus hour journey only made possible by new technology and methods.
Meanwhile, Nashville-based HCA Healthcare is the nation’s leading hospital system for performing live donor kidney transplants.
Meharry Medical College is playing a key role, too. As reporter Todd Price writes, Black patients in the U.S. are 10% less likely than white patients to receive heart transplants and 14% more likely to die in the decade after a transplant.
Why do these disparities exist and what can be done about them? Meharry, the historically Black medical school in Nashville, is trying to add more Black voices to the transplant conversation with a new program it has created.
Medical students in the new program observe the transplant process and engage with grieving families who are ask to approve organ donations. The hope is some of these students will pursue a career as transplant surgeons and boost the diversity in the field.
I asked Todd a few questions about reporting the Meharry story and his role covering the South for The Tennessean and the USA TODAY Network.
What struck you the most about reporting a story on disparities in organ donation and how Meharry plans to help bridge the divide?
Todd: From my past reporting, I wasn’t surprised to see how racism can creep into health care decisions. It affects so much of American life. And I expected that income inequality among Black and white Americans would impact the health care they receive. But I was honestly shocked to learn how diagnostic tools doctors use to decide who deserves transplants, tools that were created in recent decades, often had unfounded racist assumptions that lowered the scores Black patients received.
You interviewed Teresa Belledent, a Meharry medical student. Tell me about her story and some of the stigma she faced growing up about organ donations.
Todd: Teresa had an interesting perceptive. She was born in Haiti and immigrated to the U.S. as a child. She saw in Haiti how starkly wealth determines who receives transplants. I think that made her more sensitive to disparities in the transplant process that she found in the U.S. Teresa’s mother also was leery of organ donations, and scolded her for becoming a donor at young age. Now, though, Teresa says her mother comes to her for medical advice.
You cover a range of issues for us across the South ā from the plight of Black farmers to the unionization efforts at auto plants like Volkswagen in Chattanooga and now issues surrounding organ donations. What stories from our region fascinate you the most?
Todd: My favorite stories are the ones where I can show how an issue that appears big, knotty and complex actually plays out in concrete ways in the lives of individuals. And in the South, often those stories have deep roots in the history of the region.
How did you first get your start in journalism?
Todd: I definitely don’t have a typical journalism background. I originally planned to be a professor, and I have a doctorate in Spanish literature. I taught at Tulane University for a number of years, but I started freelancing more and more and eventually landed a staff job at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans. In 2019, I joined the USA TODAY Network, which includes The Tennessean, to cover the South. Although I would not necessarily recommend my career path to another journalist, I have found that years of studying storytelling in grad school and my training in historical research have served me well in this second career.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville making its mark in organ donation via Vanderbilt, Meharry
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