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Last year, over 70 kidney transplants took place every day in the United States. A young woman named Rachel Watson wanted to be a donor, but was initially told she didn’t qualify.
Watson, who works as a digital marketer in Warrenville, Illinois, was motivated by a story about a local politician in need of a kidney. In 2022, she approached a hospital in Chicago about donating a kidney to a stranger, only to be told during a phone screening that she weighed too much to be considered as a donor.
In January, Watson decided to try again at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood. While she passed an initial donor screening, her BMI was still too high.
That’s when she found out about Project Donor, which supports kidney and liver donor candidates who are turned away due to weight or smoking history.
Project Donor, a program run out of the University of Chicago’s Center for RISC, estimates that 90% of individuals interested in kidney donation don’t make it through the process. The goal is to bring that number down by reaching potential donors who miss donation BMI cutoffs by five to 30 pounds, or because they actively smoke cigarettes. According to University of Chicago professor Steve Levitt, who founded Project Donor, most donation centers require donors to have a BMI lower than 35. They also must not have smoked for at least 90 days before surgery, and more permanent factors such as diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, or serious mental health conditions also make potential donors ineligible. Project Donor aims to assist these donors in overcoming these obstacles.
“The system isn’t set up to help them solve those problems,” Levitt said. “We were amazed that there was nobody there trying to take these heroes, these people who are giving up their kidneys for somebody else.”
About 90% of Project Donor’s patients are working on weight loss, with the rest trying to quit smoking.
When patients start working with Project Donor, they have a 10-minute consultation with case managers over the phone, then check-ins every two or three weeks. The project provides either free smoking cessation products or free access to Noom, Weight Watchers, Future Fitness, or On Point Nutrition. Patients can get a free electric scale, as well as free access to online therapy provider Better Help, upon request.
The project also provides financial assistance, funding donors’ transportation and covering their lost wages during recovery.
Project Donor is working with 170 prospective patients, with around 20 of them residing in the Chicago area. Another 250 people have been through the program, research assistant Noah Duncan said, and 25 participants have met their donation goals so far. Eight, including Watson, have donated a kidney. Eight more are still navigating the pre-surgery process.
Kidneys are the organs most likely to come from a live donor,