Hilary P

Chair of the Kings College Hospital and a proud Liver Transplant recipient - giving thanks to my donor team and everyone involved in organ donation and transplantation.

Hilary is the team captain for the London region. Read more about her story below.

I had a liver transplant in Dec 2015 at Kings, as a result of primary biliary cholangitis/cirrhosis. I was working right up to transplant and had 5 aborted transplant attempts before I got sepsis and went into organ failure- I had emergency treatment and was moved to Kings where I stayed for a few weeks and finally, at the 11th try, I got the liver that was meant for me and I’m doing well. I am also in touch with my organ donor family and have a nice relationship with them.

Work wise- I’m a civil servant and while working on faith and belief engagement policy I was able to help with organ donation work a few times. In 2018, to coincide with the consultation for the change to the organ donation law I came up with the idea to do a tweetstorm on Twitter to get faith and belief communities to talk about organ donation. I created the #talkorgandonation hashtag and lead a day of Twitter activity to raise the profile of organ donation in ethnic minority communities.

In 2019 I helped NHSBT with designing the campaign materials for the change in the organ donation law as well as supporting with the grant funding programme which NHSBT ran for faith and belief groups to do engagement work in communities. I have also worked with NHSBT to provide a patient voice for work they were doing on changing some transplant processes.

I now work to on social policy but I try to include awareness of organ donation in my daily interactions. I became the Chair of the Kings College Hospital Trust ODC, where I am lucky to be able to work with a team of committed, caring and innovative specialists to improve awareness of organ donation throughout the Hospital and the local communities.