Making organ donations easier for Black and Brown people, thanks to a new law

Not enough is being done to make organ donations available for people of color and to Aisha Tator, there is still much work to be done. In fact, she says there is an organ scarcity crisis, which has become a public health crisis.

“We have over 50% of New Yorkers enrolled in the New York State Donate Life Registry,” Tator explained to the AmNews. “But we have a lot of work to do. We have 8,000 people who are depending on us to be advocates.”

Tator is Executive Director of Donate Life New York State, a nonprofit that works to increase organized tissue donation. The organization highlights the critical need to promote awareness for the lack of available organs in the United States.

One of the mechanisms that Tator and others see to get that work done is through the HEART Act, a piece of legislation passed in October 2025, that repeals New York state’s ban on multiple listing requirements for organ transplants and allows patients to register at a number of transplant centers within New York. The hope is that this will save lives and reduce the time that individuals wait for organs, as well as assist low-income residents who face costs associated with out-of-state registration.

“We’re really proud of one of the policy initiatives that got through the process this year,” Tator said, praising the HEART Act. “Not only are patients encouraged to list at more than one transplant center, but transplant centers are required by federal policy to inform patients verbally and in writing of their right to list at more than one transplant center. . . . It enhances equity and fairness in the system and we’ll talk about that. And it also brings New York into alignment with national standards and policies.”

There have been wins in the fight to get more individuals to become organ donors. In a press release from 2024, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that for the first time, more than 50 percent of the eligible New Yorkers had registered to become organ and tissue donors through New York’s Organ Donor Registry.

“This is a very important milestone for New York and the thousands of New Yorkers who are waiting for a life-saving organ transplant,” Hochul said in the statement.

Tator acknowledges that while there have been gains to individuals donating organs, there is still more to do.

“When I started here 13 years ago, we had over 10,000 people waiting for life-saving organ transplants,” she said. “So we’re heading in the right direction, but we have a long way to go. We have the third highest need in the country. We have a lot of work to do.”

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