ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 6, 2024 — AdventHealth and OurLegacy, east Central Florida’s federally designated organ procurement organization, announce the opening of the OurLegacy Center, the first of its kind in Florida and one of only 20 specialized donor care units in the U.S.
OurLegacy Center is a mini-intensive care unit designed specifically for people who have been pronounced brain dead and whose organs are going to be transplanted. Organ donor heroes will be brought to the facility from hospitals across the 10-county donor service area.
The center will help families like Chris and Laura Dawkins whose daughter Brooke passed away in 2014. The UCF sophomore’s selfless act of organ donation saved four lives.
“You go back, and you wish you'd had more time, obviously,” said Brooke’s father, Chris Dawkins. “I think with [OurLegacy Center], you will get that time. And I think it will promote the healing.”
“It means more comfort in saying goodbye to their loved one, to have a place that they know is specifically caring for them is something that really has been absent in the community,” said Dr. Bobby Nibhanupudy, medical director for the AdventHealth Transplant Institute abdominal transplant program and OurLegacy.
The specialized unit has a 50-person, dedicated staff, and contains both critical care services and surgical care services. It also
provides space for families and dedicated support staff including chaplains, family services coordinators, critical care nurses and other specialized teams to help families with the grieving process.
“Bringing the heroes to the donor care unit allows us to more efficiently take care of them and maximize their organ function, and that allows us to place a lot more organs for transplantation,” Nibhanupudy said. “There have been studies that show as much as a 20% increase in available organs happens with these donor care units.”
“By giving this gift of life, the donor and their families are having a tremendously positive impact on the recipients, on the lives of the recipient's family, on the lives of the donor's own family,” said Ginny McBride, OurLegacy executive director.
Nearly 104,000 people are waiting for a lifesaving transplant in the U.S., according to the United Network for Organ Sharing(UNOS). Of those, almost 600 are being cared for by teams at the AdventHealth Transplant Institute, Orlando’s only solid-organ transplant program.
Florida residents can sign up to be an organ donor at https://www.donatelifeflorida.org.