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Fernando Moreno has been on dialysis for about two years, enduring an “unbearable” wait for a new kidney to save his life. His limited world of social contacts has meant that his hopes have hinged on inching up the national waiting list for a transplant.That was until earlier this year, when the Philadelphia hospital where he receives treatment connected him with a promising pilot project that has paired him with “angel advocates” Good Samaritan strangers scattered around the country who leverage their own social media contacts to share his story.So far, the Great Social Experiment, as it was named by its founder, Los Angeles filmmaker David Krissman, hasn’t found the Vineland, New Jersey, truck driver a living kidney donor. But there are encouraging early signs the angel advocate approach is working, and there’s no question it has given Moreno new optimism.“This process is great,” said Moreno, 50, whose own father died of kidney failure at 65. “I’m just hoping there will be somebody out there that’s willing to take a chance.”Moreno is part of a pilot program with 15 patients that began in May at three Pennsylvania hospitals. It’s testing whether motivated, volunteer strangers can help improve the chances of finding a life-saving match for a new kidney particularly for people with limited social networks.“We know how this has always been done, and we’re trying to put that on steroids and really get them the help that they need,” Krissman said. “Most patients are too sick to do this on their own many don’t have the skills to do it on their own.” Seeking a blueprint for the future The Gift of Life Donor Program, which serves as the organ procurement network for eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware, is supporting the pilot program with a grant of more than $100,000 from its foundation.So far, two of the five patients in the program through Temple University Hospital have found kidney donors, and one is preparing for surgery, according to Ryan Ihlenfeldt, the hospital’s director of clinical transplant services. One of the five patients at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Harrisburg has also undergone a transplant.The approach Krissman has developed is something new, said Richard Hasz Jr., Gift of Life’s chief executive, and may help identify the types of messages that attract and motivate potential live kidney donors.“This is the first of its kind that I’m aware of,” Hasz said. “That’s why, I think, the foundation was so interested in doing it studying it and hopefully publishing it so we can create that blueprint, if you will, for the future.”Gift of Life agreed to fund a broader test and helped Krissman identify five patients each at Temple, UPMC-Harrisburg and Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.Hasz said the pilot program’s approach combines social media outreach with Krissman’s storytelling talents and aggressive efforts to mobilize the patients’ own connections.“We know that patients who are waiting don’t always have the energy or the resources to do this themselves,” Hasz said.There have been other ways for patients to set up “microsites” where they can tell their stories and seek a donor match. But the pilot program currently underway in Pennsylvania aims to connect patients with a wide universe of potential donors and produce videos and other ways to spread their message. Potential to ‘snowball’ Krissman’s bout with an illness about two decades ago inspired him to tackle the sticky challenge of increasing live kidney donations. He was debilitated for more than a year before medication helped him recover, explaining, “It gave me my life back. And I never forgot what it’s like to be chronically sick.”After producing a podcast on kidney transplantation, Krissman recruited four patients through Facebook who were waiting for kidneys. He was able to help two of them. A second effort, a pilot program with three patients in North Carolina that ended last year, helped match all three with living donors.Becca Brown, director of transplant services at UPMC-Harrisburg, thinks it might be a game changer.“There’s potential for this to really snowball,” Brown said. “I’m anxious to see what happens and if we can roll it out to other patients.”Some 90,000 people in the United States are on a list for a kidney transplant, and most of the roughly 28,000 kidneys that were transplanted last year came from deceased donors. Living kidney donations are hard to come by about 6,400 were transplanted last year. Thousands die each year waiting for an organ transplant in the United States.Living kidney donations can be a better match, reducing the risk of organ rejection. They allow for surgery to be planned for a time that is optimal for the donor, the recipient and the transplant team. And, the foundation says, living donor kidneys, on average, last longer than kidneys from deceased donors.The National Kidney Foundation says living donors must be at least 18 years old, although some transplant centers set the minimum age at 21. Potential donors get screened for health problems and can be ruled out if they have uncontrolled high blood pressure, diabetes or cancer, or if they are smokers.Many living donors make “directed donations” to specify who will get their kidney. Nondirected donations are made anonymously to a patient. A way to make a difference Francis Beaumier, a 38-year-old information technology worker from Green Bay, Wisconsin, came into contact with the angel advocate program after being a double living donor a kidney and part of his liver.He sees the program as “a great little way for everyone to make a small difference.”Another angel advocate, Holly Armstrong, was also a living donor. She hopes her efforts will plant a seed.“Some people might just keep scrolling,” said Armstrong, who lives in Lake Wiley, South Carolina. “But there might be someone like me, where they stop scrolling and say, ‘This boy needs a kidney.'”A study released last year found that people who volunteer to donate a kidney are at a lower risk of death from the operation than doctors had previously thought. Tracking 30 years of living kidney donations, researchers found fewer than 1 in every 10,000 donors died within three months of the surgery. Newer and safer surgical techniques were credited for dropping the risk from 3 deaths per 10,000 living donors.Temple serves a large cohort of poorer patients who can have difficulty understanding health issues and who suffer from uncontrolled hypertension and diabetes, Ihlenfeldt, who works there, said.“What David’s trying to do is coalesce a network of support around these patients who are sharing the story for them,” Ihlenfeldt said. Rallying for Ahmad At a kickoff event in a Harrisburg meeting room for kidney patient Ahmad Collins, a couple dozen friends and family listened with rapt attention as Krissman went over the game plan, answering questions and describing the transplant processCollins, a 50-year-old city government worker and former Penn State linebacker, has needed 10 hours a night of dialysis since a medical procedure left him with damaged kidneys late last year.His mind was on the strangers who might decide to pitch in.“They can be a superhero, so to speak,” Collins said. “They can have the opportunity to save somebody’s life, and not too many times in life do you have that opportunity.” Mark Scolforo, Associated Press
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The Great British Railways has a great British brand. The U.K.’s new public railway is leaning on well-known, classic symbolism for its visual identity unveiled this month. Train liveries for the new brand will show a design of a stylized Union Jack flag, while the new logo brings back an old double arrow concept designed in 1965 by Gerald Barney for the old state-run British Rail. The brand’s font is the simple, modern sans-serif Rail Alphabet 2, an updated version of the British Rail font designed in the 1960s by Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir. The new brand was designed in house by the U.K.’s Department for Transport and it will begin rolling out on trains, stations, signage, websites, and a ticketing app by spring 2026. The branding is an outward manifestation of a wider goal to deliver better public transportation. Already, they’ve frozen rail fare for the first time in 30 years. [Image: GBR] “This isn’t just a paint job,” U.K. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said in a statement. Instead, “it represents a new railway, casting off the frustrations of the past and focused entirely on delivering a proper public service for passengers.” A new take on an old brand Modern, minimalist, and geometric, Barney’s original 1965 double arrow logo for British Rail used the lines and angles of the U.K. flag to cleverly communicate two-way transportation. The mark also has staying power. [Image: GBR] Even after British Rail began to be privatized in the 1990s, the double arrow mark remained in use as an official rail symbol in the U.K. at stations and on tickets. And just as with classic mid-century civic design in the U.S., there’s similarly an audience for print standards manuals of the old British Rail brand. The U.K. is in the process of renationalizing its railway companies following challenges like a drop in riders following the pandemic and high ticket prices. Both Conservative and Labour governments have pushed to make more of the country’s railways public, and for now, nine train operators, representing a third of all passenger train traffic in Great Britain, are nationalized. The remaining seven are expected to be nationalized by October 2027. [Image: GBR] Bringing the double arrow logo back, refining an old, classic font, and using a flag-inspired livery design is a smart move that keeps the public’s ownership of the brand front and center with well known and widely understood symbolism. If Great British Railways can deliver on a better experience for riders, the brand could become an example of civic design and public ownership done right.
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Ryan Coogler’s bluesy vampire thriller “Sinners,” the big screen musical “Wicked: For Good” and the Netflix phenomenon “KPop Demon Hunters” are all a step closer to an Oscar nomination. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released shortlists for 12 categories Tuesday, including for best song, score, international and documentary film, cinematography and this year’s new prize, casting.“Sinners” and “Wicked: For Good” received the most shortlist mentions with eight each, including makeup and hair, sound, visual effects, score, casting and cinematography. Both have two original songs advancing as well. For “Wicked” it’s Stephen Schwartz’s “The Girl in the Bubble” and “No Place Like Home.” For “Sinners,” it’s Ludwig Göransson, Miles Caton and Alice Smith’s “Last Time (I Seen the Sun),” and Göransson and Raphael Saadiq’s “I Lied to You.”The “KPop Demon Hunters” hit “Golden,” by EJAE and Mark Sonnenblick, was another shortlisted song alongside other notable artists like: Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner for “Train Dreams”; John Mayer, Ed Sheeran and Blake Slatkin for the “F1” song “Drive”; Sara Bareilles, Brandi Carlile and Andrea Gibson for “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet” from “Come See Me In the Good Light”; and Miley Cyrus, Simon Franglen, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt for “Dream as One” from “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” Diane Warren also might be on her way to a 17th nomination with “Dear Me” from “Diane Warren: Relentless.”One of the highest profile shortlist categories is the best international feature, where 15 films were named including “Sentimental Value” (Norway), “Sirât” (Spain), “No Other Choice” (South Korea), “The Secret Agent” (Brazil), “It Was Just an Accident” (France), “The Voice of Hind Rajab” (Tunisia), “Sound of Falling” (Germany) and “The President’s Cake” (Iraq).Notable documentaries among the 15 include “My Undesirable Friends: Part I Last Air in Moscow,” “The Perfect Neighbor,” “The Alabama Solution,” “Come See Me in the Good Light,” “Cover-Up” and Mstyslav Chernov’s “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” a co-production between The Associated Press and PBS Frontline.The Oscars’ new award for casting shortlisted 10 films that will vie for the five nomination slots: “Frankenstein,” “Hamnet,” “Marty Supreme,” “One Battle After Another,” “The Secret Agent,” “Sentimental Value,” “Sinners,” “Sirt,” “Weapons,” and “Wicked: For Good.” Notably “Jay Kelly and “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” did not make the list.Composers who made the shortlist for best score include Göransson (“Sinners”), Jonny Greenwood (“One Battle After Another”), Max Richter (“Hamnet”), Alexandre Desplat (“Frankenstein”) and Kangding Ray (“Sirt”).For the most part, shortlists are determined by members in their respective categories, though the specifics vary from branch to branch: Some have committees, some have minimum viewing requirements.As most of the shortlists are in below-the-line categories celebrating crafts like sound and visual effects, there are also films that aren’t necessarily the most obvious of Oscar contenders like “The Alto Knights,” shortlisted in hair and makeup, as well as the widely panned “Tron: Ares” and “The Electric State,” both shortlisted for visual effects. “Tron: Ares” also made the lists for score and song with Nine Inch Nails’ “As Alive As You Need Me To Be”.The lists will narrow to five when final nominations are announced on Jan. 22. The 98th Oscars, hosted by Conan O’Brien, will air live on ABC on March 15 at 7 p.m. ET. Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer
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