Support for Hand & Face Transplant Patients

Reconstructive transplantation is a new field of medicine helping individuals who have survived traumatic injuries or amputations. As with heart transplants, liver transplants, and other lifesaving transplants, transplants of the hands/arms, face, penis, or other body part are gifts from deceased donors. Unlike hearts and livers, hands and face transplants aren’t required for survival but they can return quality of life, and are “life-giving” in terms of helping patients with injured hands or faces regain relational normalcy and independence.

Reconstructive transplants, also called VCA (for “vascularized composite allotransplants”) are unique and rare; unlike any other transplant, VCA’s are always visible and require lifelong, labor-intensive care. People who receive a graft hand/arm, penis, or face; their caregivers; and their families need a community of peers who can share information and give support.

This is our goal: Create a nonprofit organization to assist VCA recipients and their loved ones in the reconstructive transplantation journey, to give VCA patients a voice, and to support VCA patient families with care-related resources.

Even through meetings and education with various doctors and other medical transplant staff, potential recipients of reconstructive transplants don’t always receive all the necessary information needed, such as the effectiveness of the transplants, side effects of medications, diet restrictions, etc. The Reconstructive Transplant Peer Network will help patients navigate all these experiences.

Our current fundraising goal is $3800 to cover the full costs of incorporating the Reconstructive Transplant Peer Network as a nonprofit in the United States.

Your donation will assist our organizing efforts in the following ways:

A fee of $3300 will be going to pay The Foundation Group to help us draft articles of incorporation and file the forms correctly with the IRS; draft by-laws and conflict of interest policies; register for fundraising licenses in all states where we will be raising money.