High-profile Denver attorney Steve Farber, who received a lifesaving kidney transplant last year, is launching a new foundation to help boost organ donation.
Farber has rounded up a group of influential Coloradans to create the Transplant Foundation, which he hopes will increase awareness of organ donorship, fund science and research, and influence public policy.
Among the board members is Aspen’s Chris Klug, who received a liver transplant 18 months before snowboarding for a bronze medal in the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Farber said he contributed an undisclosed amount of seed money to the foundation and plans to give more as needed. He has received commitments of $250,000 so far, including his own money.
“The plan is to raise a couple million in the next few years, at least,” Farber said.
The Transplant Foundation has filed with the Colorado secretary of state’s office as a 501(c)3 organization and will formally launch in two to three months. Its first fundraising event is scheduled for November.
The foundation recently hired Heidi Heltzel as its president. Now vice president of government affairs for the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry, Heltzel will start her new job at the end of August.
“Our intention is to be a national foundation, but our first objective is to build relationships in our own community,” Heltzel said.
Heltzel said the Transplant Foundation will work to support existing nonprofit groups in Colorado that promote donor awareness.
One of the Transplant Foundation’s goals will be to endow a transplant chair at the University of Colorado Hospital and perhaps other institutions. Another is to place kiosks in grocery stores providing information about donorship and encouraging people to sign up on the state’s donor registry.
Farber said he wants to reduce the time that potential organ recipients must wait to get a lifesaving transplant. For kidneys, the most common transplanted organ, wait times in the United States can be as long as six years.
Nearly 90,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for organs, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Last year 27,000 organ transplants were performed by live and deceased donors. Each year, more than 6,000 Americans die from the lack of available organs for transplant.
In Colorado, 1,500 people are on the waiting list for organs, while 382 transplants were performed here.
A campaign to increase the number of people who sign the back of their driver’s license to become organ donors in Colorado could save lives, Farber said. Currently, 58 percent of Colorado drivers have done so.
The foundation also will provide support and information to those who need an organ, something Farber says was lacking during his experience.
Farber, co-founder of the Brownstein Hyatt & Farber law firm in Denver, was diagnosed with kidney disease in June 2003 and received a kidney from his son Gregg in May 2004.
Farber is co-authoring a book with former law firm partner Harlan Abrahams. Through the experience of the Farbers and another family, the book explores the complex issues surrounding organ transplants.
Those issues include the burgeoning international black market for organs and the debate over legalizing the purchase and sale of organs in a regulated market; the trend in some states of giving financial compensation to donors’ families; anonymous organ donations; and the growing role of the Internet in matching organ donors to recipients.
The Transplant Foundation’s board of directors includes Farber; his partner Norman Brownstein; developer Jim Sullivan; University of Colorado transplant specialists Dr. Laurence Chan and Dr. Igal Kam; and Denver businessmen Dick Robinson and Barry Hirschfeld.
Staff writer Greg Griffin can be reached at 303-820-1241 or ggriffin@denverpost.com.
