US organ donation breakthrough collaborative increases organ donation.

More than 92000 Americans are on waiting lists for organ transplants, and an average of 17 of them die each day while waiting. The US Organ Donation Breakthrough Collaborative (ODBC), which began in 2003 at the request of the Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, was a formal, concerted effort of the donation and transplantation community to bring about a major change to improve the organ donation system. The nationwide Collaborative was housed within a Health and Human Services agency, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Division of Transplantation, and included participation of the organ procurement organizations (OPOs) throughout the United States and the American hospitals with the largest organ-donor potential.

Assessing and using the multiple correlated components of the burden of disease in decision-making in health care.

In medical decision-making, we must (a) establish the patient's prognosis, and (b) identify the therapeutic strategy that will best improve that prognosis. The prognosis is the projected progression over time of the cumulative probability of (a) mortality, (b) morbidity, (c) disability, (d) psychological distress, and (e) resource use. Our modeling employs parametric representations and multivariate analysis to produce the predicted individual and joint probabilities of any range of each measure and of combinations of the measures.

Beyond survival: the burden of disease in decision making in organ transplantation.

Organ transplantation has long been perceived as a life-saving intervention. However, it is now recognized that the broader objectives include reducing the patient's burden of disease. The components of the burden of disease include (i) mortality, (ii) morbidity, (iii) disability, (iv) psychological distress and (v) resource use.