You can include updates on your location, mood and relationship status on Facebook, so why not include one that could save a life?
With organ donation on the decline, Facebook is looking to increase awareness of this life saving gift with a new status update that tells whether or not you’re an organ donor.
The new service was unveiled on ABC’s Good Morning America this week. If you want to update your status to indicate that you are an organ donor, users can go to their Timeline, click on the Life Event option, navigate to the Health and Wellness section, and then select the Organ Donor option to add it to their profile. The feature also provides a link to official organ donor registries for unregistered donors. And, for those concerned about the privacy surrounding the new feature, users can make their status public, private or just for friends.
“Today, more than 114,000 people in the United States, and millions more around the globe, are waiting for the heart, kidney or liver transplant that will save their lives,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, wrote in a statement. “Many of those people – an average of 18 people per day – will die waiting, because there simply aren’t enough organ donors to meet the need. Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis. And we believe that by simply telling people that you’re an organ donor, the power of sharing and connection can play an important role.”
As reported by ABC News, part of the inspiration for the new feature came from a fellow Harvard alum, Dr. Andrew Cameron, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Cameron reportedly wrote about the current crisis of too few organ donors in a recent Harvard Reunion Class report, and ran into Sandberg at a reunion event. According to Cameron, “She said, ‘I remember what you wrote last time and I think Facebook can help with the problem of organ donation.'”