LifeLINES | Spring 2023

Check Your Heart campaign aims to bolster Organ Donor Registry Do you have a heart on your license or state ID?

platforms, whether it’s social media, TV or radio. Traditional marketing platforms and outreach, including a rally at the state Capitol building in Lansing, slated for June 20, also are included. The goal of Check Your Heart: Add 1 million new names to the Donor Registry. “This campaign is for Philip and so many other Philips in Michigan,” said Racha Kardahji, Gift of Life’s director of marketing and communications. She oversees the Check Your Heart campaign. “Patients are desperately waiting and they’re counting on residents to sign up. It’s the most selfless act one can make,” she said. “So please Check Your Heart.”

Philip Perry and about 2,400 other patients in Michigan are so sick that they’re

Gift of Life Michigan is in the midst of the Check Your Heart campaign, a statewide marketing effort to grow the Michigan Organ Donor Registry and offer more hope to Philip and others like him. It’s simple: Check for the heart on your driver’s license or state ID. If it’s there, you’re a registered organ, eye and tissue donor. If it’s not, take five minutes to sign up, either through the Gift of Life website, golm.org/register , or the Michigan Secretary of State website, Michigan.gov/OrganDonation . The integrated statewide campaign is focused on meeting Michiganders where they are: through digital

counting on donors and their families to save their lives.

Philip Perry

The 40-year-old Monroe man is among more than 100 people in the state who need a new heart and he knows the odds aren’t in his favor. “I’m trying not to think about the things that people in my situation seem to think about a lot,” he said. “When I find myself falling down, I just try to get back up and don’t go that far down again.”

Mustafa Sharafi, liver transplant recipient

Justin Shilling was one of four students killed in the 2021 Oxford High School shooting. He saved the lives of six people with organs and tissue (heart valves).

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Gift of Life Michigan | golm.org

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