[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - Hey, everyone, Steve Adubato here.

Welcome to a very special interview that you're about to see with my colleague, Jacqui Tricarico, who is our Senior Correspondent.

Jacqui, you attended the June 7th 5K Celebration of Life, if you will, for the New Jersey Sharing Network.

Tell folks what they're about to see.

- Well, New Jersey Sharing Network is an organ and tissue procurement organization here in New Jersey, and the event was all about honoring those that we have lost that were organ and tissue donors, remembering their lives, and also bringing awareness to those who are still waiting for organ and tissue donations.

So many people, 4,000 here in New Jersey, are on the waiting list for a lifesaving organ.

So this event was just so impactful in its 16th year.

16 years, it's been going on.

It's a huge event in New Providence, New Jersey, and I was lucky enough to be there.

Again, I've been doing this over a decade, and I get to go there every year to share their wonderful, impactful, important stories.

Yeah, it's 4,000 in New Jersey waiting, 100,000-plus in the United States.

Important, compelling, powerful interviews.

Here's one of Jacqui's right here.

- Hi, I'm Jacqui Tricarico, on location at the New Jersey Sharing Network 5K event here in New Providence, New Jersey.

So excited now to be joined by Michael Goldstein, who's the director of the Division of Organ Transplantation and the Program Director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation at Hackensack Meridian Hackensack University Medical Center.

Big mouthful.

We're going to get into what all that means, Dr.

Goldstein.

- Good morning.

- Good morning.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for joining us.

So I want to talk about the relationship between hospital and nonprofit New Jersey Sharing Network organization and how the synergy needs to be just so in tune to make sure that the process of organ donation is done smoothly on the hospital end.

- So the relationship between hospitals and the New Jersey Sharing Network or Organ Procurement Organization, as we also call them, is somewhat of a mandatory relationship for all Medicare-supported hospitals to become donor hospitals.

So the hospitals in the surrounding community have to partner with an OPO or organ procurement organization for part of Medicare certification.

And that's one mandate that we have as a hospital to support organ donation and support our community.

At the same time, Hackensack University Medical Center is also a transplant center.

So we have a dual role.

So we not only support organ donation at our hospitals within our health system, but we also save lives with the organs that we receive through organ donation.

So it's a kind of full spectrum support of our community.

- And heading these transplantation teams for you, how important is it that on the hospital end, you are really honoring the donor and the donor families and helping them during such a difficult time in their lives?

- It's incredibly rewarding and probably one of the most difficult things you can do in our society.

Supporting a donor and supporting a donor family at this critical time in their life to make one of the most complex decisions about saving other lives at the end of someone's life is extremely complicated.

Our system does it very effectively, focusing on the patient and focusing on really the big picture of how to support the patient and their wishes at the end of their life.

You cannot have donation without transplantation and you can't have transplantation without donation.

It's a partnership.

So for us as a transplant center and for our transplant teams, it's extremely important to support the donor teams and the donor community so we can save more lives.

- When we're talking about the actual transplantation itself, talk about the advancements in the technology that's really helping you do even more now.

- So the most important advances that have happened... Transplantation's been around for about 70 years now.

The operation itself for the most part has been about the same.

We take organs out, we put them in, they're surgical procedures, but what's really changed in terms of helping people live longer and healthier with organ transplants has been the industry support that we receive from pharmaceutical companies that can make the complex medications to change the immunosuppression, to make it healthier and reduce rejection rates, as well as the technology parts of what we do, bringing robotic assistance and bringing machines that help resuscitate and make organs last longer outside of the body.

So those two things have really changed the outcome of kidney transplant.

When I started in this field about 25 years ago, kidneys I would tell patients would last between 5 and 10 years and then they'd have to do it again.

Now I tell patients a living donor kidney may last for 20 years on average.

So the amount of time that people can be saved from these organs has really increased and that's because of, I would say, a multi-modality approach, both with biopharma, hospital-based programs as well as industry support in the technology components.

- Let's talk a little bit more about the living donor.

I've heard these stories many times.

I actually have a neighbor whose husband is getting a kidney from his wife in the next couple of weeks.

The living donor aspect of this, what should people know about that?

Because even if you're not a match for your loved one who might need this life-saving organ, you can do other things to still become a living organ donor, correct?

- That's correct.

So living donation is really the marquee effort of what we can do for kidney and liver transplantation.

If you have a living donor, there are some really great benefits for the recipient.

One is you don't have to wait a long time on a waiting list.

Second, that organ is one of the healthiest organs, so it's going to function right away.

And third, it has the potential to last longer than a deceased donor organ.

So for a patient, living donation is really the most important effort they should focus on.

How do you find a living donor?

It's somewhat difficult.

It's a difficult question to ask someone.

We don't like to ask for a cup of coffee.

It's hard to ask for an organ from somebody.

- And then you need to be a perfect match.

- And you need to be a reasonable match.

It doesn't necessarily have to be perfect, but those are difficult things to ask for.

So we spend a lot of time educating patients about how to ask the question and make more awareness the fact that we all can be living donors.

We don't have to wait till our end of life to become an organ donor.

We can donate right now.

Most of us are born with two kidneys.

You can give one away and save your loved one.

You can save a stranger.

Even more important right now is some innovative things that we've been doing for probably over a decade, maybe almost two, is called paired kidney exchange.

And even more intuitive and innovative is something called voucher donation.

And so in some ways, let's say I have a loved one, a son or daughter, a nephew who's young, but has a kidney disease that's going to take many years to progress and they don't need a transplant today.

But I want to donate today because where I am in the part of my life is I'm healthy enough now.

In 20 years, I may not be healthy enough to donate or in the right age component.

If I donate today to help another patient, I may receive a voucher that I can give to up to five people that they can basically hand in when they're medically suitable and medically ready for a transplant.

So it allows us to protect our loved ones today for potential future needs as well.

And if you don't match, let's say I wanted to donate to you and we didn't match, we can go into a national network.

There are a few different networks that work with this and use computer matching and complex algorithms to allow us to exchange organs so you receive a healthy organ that's compatible for you and there's no risk of having rejection if mine wasn't compatible as well.

And so those really allow us to increase the opportunities for living donation.

- Yeah, just incredible thinking on how different ways we can go about this process.

Finally, for you, you said 25 years doing this job.

Why are you still so passionate about the work that you're doing?

- Yeah, it's really truly exciting.

Donation, I've been part of organ donation and transplantation, so I've seen both sides of it and I try to live both sides of it all the time.

In my role, I have the real honor to see one-on-one.

And so with one organ, I save one patient and building that relationship and seeing the life benefits of that is something that personally for me is extremely rewarding.

And not only the immediate relationship that I have as a surgeon, I have long-term relationships with my patients that go on for decades and decades where I can help them live and see their life as it progresses.

So extremely rewarding on both ends.

And so I'm really honored to be in this field.

- Well, thank you so much for sharing more so we can understand more about what happens on the hospital end of organ donation.

Thank you so much, Dr.

Goldstein.

- Thank you very much.

- We'll be right back after this.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

The Fund for New Jersey.

NJM Insurance Group.

PSE&G.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Russell Berrie Foundation.

Valley Bank.

And by New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program.

Promotional support provided by ROI-NJ.

And by CIANJ, and Commerce Magazine.

- How long you been waiting?

- About a half hour.

- Brutal.

This keeps up, I'm gonna miss my pickleball game.

- I've been waiting eight years for a kidney.

What can you do?

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Over 100,000 people in the US are waiting for a life-saving transplant.

But you can do your part in an instant.

Register as an organ donor today at NJSN.org.