Donna Cryer: A Celebration of Life!
Sunday, September 29 is the 25th anniversary of Donna Cryer’s liver transplant.
Join GLI in celebrating Donna’s life-saving surgery and recognizing all the people whose lives have been saved through liver health research and innovation.
Please make an anniversary gift of $25 or more to help GLI expand the number of liver advocates.
Like many people who require a liver transplant to live, Donna’s illness was a surprise and affected her at a young age. In the days leading up to her miracle transplant, her life was in doubt. She was told that she had only a few days left to live.
This remains the situation for far too many liver patients – and many people in the U.S. and around the world facing this life threatening circumstance today.
Donna dedicated her life and career to solutions for all liver patients. Her transplant, of which she says she thanks her donor every single day, enabled her to finish law school. In her career, she worked on transplant policy issues, patient advocacy, helping nonprofit organizations to succeed, and in 2014 opened the doors of the Global Liver Institute (GLI).
With GLI, Donna has worked to achieve equity for liver diseases: obtaining medical, public health, patient support, research, and policy resources equal to patient needs, both individually and throughout our societies worldwide.
Donna’s method is simple: bring patients, thought leaders, and organizations together to achieve unified focus on liver health goals, including finding new and effective diagnostic and treatment methods, and educating patients, healthcare professionals and policymakers on what each can do to prevent liver diseases. Of paramount importance: raising the patient voice and bringing it to policy forums where resource and treatment decisions are made. Specifically, GLI is working to:
Address the worldwide epidemic of Fatty Liver Disease and NASH;
Reverse the high mortality rate and increasing number of people diagnosed with liver cancer;
Achieve equitable policies for liver transplants and increasing the supply of organs made available on a timely basis; and
Spotlighting rare and pediatric liver diseases.
Donna knows that no one organization can achieve the advances for liver patients that GLI seeks. She knows that there is a need for many advocates. This is why in 2017, Donna created the Advanced Advocacy Academy, which we call “A3.” Through this program, now in its third year, GLI is training liver patients to be advocates and to take their advocacy skills across the U.S. and around the world to speak, educate, and advocate for the needs of liver patients. And it is working!
You can help!
Help GLI recognize Donna and expand our training of liver patient advocates – our best hope for overcoming liver diseases.
GLI provides scholarships to ensure as many advocates as possible can attend the annual training.
Advanced Advocacy Academy, Class of 2018
Advanced Advocacy Academy, Class of 2017
We are asking all those who recognize the work Donna and GLI are doing to help celebrate her milestone 25th transplant anniversary by making contributions in multiples of $25 – $50, $100, $500, $2,500 – whatever you can afford. All funds will be used to help GLI pay for A3 scholarships, a tribute to the work of Donna Cryer.
P.S. If you would like to send a personal message to Donna, use this link.