May 14, 2003

MEDIA CONTACT: Karen Blum
PHONE: 410-955-1534
E-MAIL: kblum@jhmi.edu

Hopkins Hosts 200 Transplant Patients at Educational Conference May 17
– U.S. Deputy Surgeon General to Give Keynote Address –

• Nearly 200 transplant patients and their families from across the country are expected to attend a day-long educational seminar sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center on Saturday, May 17, at The Holiday Inn in Timonium, 2004 Greenspring Drive.
  
  The 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. program, "The Transplant Journey: A Roadmap for Your Well-being," will address issues affecting the everyday lives of transplant recipients, candidates and their relatives.
  
  Kenneth Moritsugu, M.D., M.P.H., deputy surgeon general of the United States, whose wife's and daughter's deaths in separate auto accidents influenced his work as an organ donor advocate, will give the keynote address. Moritsugu's wife was killed in 1992, and his adult daughter in 1996. Organs from both women were donated, and Moritsugu knows of 13 people alive today as a result.
  
  Speakers from Johns Hopkins, the United Network for Organ Sharing, and the Transplant Resource Center of Maryland will address financial and psychosocial issues surrounding organ transplant.
  
  Topics and speakers include:
  
  • Medication cost issues: Robert N. McEwan, CEO of Medbank, a Towson-based organization that helps patients get needed prescription medicine.
    
  • The role of living donors: Luis Arrazola, M.D., director of Hopkins' live donor liver transplant program.
    Caring for the chronically ill: Linda Darrell, a social worker at Hopkins.
    
  • Nutrition: Dennis Myers, a clinical dietician specialist at Hopkins.

For more information about the conference, please call Judy Minkove at 443-287-2896. To interview any of the speakers, please call me at 410-955-1534.