August Cabinet Meeting
LEBW Report for Council of Governors

We continue to make great progress at the Lions Eye Bank, and there are some changes that I'd like to share with you as well! Our new Executive Director, Darice Langham, started in March, and the transition seems to be going smoothly. She comes to us with more than 20 years of experience in the field of organ, tissue, and eye donation, so we are very optimistic about the future.

Several months ago, you received an update on our progress with processing our own tissue on site. Although getting this proiect up and running has been extensive and time consuming due to FDA regulations that we must meet, we continue to move forward with great success. We are now in our trial phase, and tissues are being cut to perfect the process. we expect that in the coming months we will begin offering the highest quality processed tissue for transplant, right from our Madison lab.

Over the past few months, we have come to the realization that this team at the Eye Bank is not only good... they are fantastic! our donor recovery activity from QTR 1 of this year to QTR 2 has increased by 33%, with the most recoveries performed in a single month record heing set just this June (100 donor recoveries). We are serving more donor families, and have been able to continue to place the tissue, even with the increased volume. Between January and June of this year, we placed 773 tissues, 572 for transplant with another 201 placed for research and education. Another impressive statistic that we are very proud of, is the fact that we have cut the number of discards by half (1st 6 mo. 2014 = 169 Vs. 1st 6 mo. 2015 = 88) so more families are being notified that something good was able to come from their loved one's donation. These statistics are evidence that the Lions Eye Bank of Wisconsin continues to help many people with the Gift of Sight.

In May and June, because of the increased number of recoveries, our Lions transporters had two record months of individual trips, exceeding 360 trips in the month of June!

The Eye Bank has also recently established a Donor Family Support Program. This is something that other donation programs in Wisconsin have routinery offered, but we had not. We recognize that donor families are the reason we are able to further our mission... without them, we have no transplants. Therefore, we,ve launched our Family Support program in order to best honor the gift. Through this program, we will follow our families for 1 year, corresponding with them along the way to offering them grief resources and sentiments throughout the year, as well as guiding them, if they want to write, or even speak with the recipients who received their loved ones tissue. We have already experienced the positive effects from this, as our Family support services representatives receive multiple calls each week from families, thanking us for the correspondence and support. Another note about this program... a portion of your Lions/Lioness financial donations are funding this program. The other half of your financial support will be supporting research at the UW Ophthalmology department as part of the Gift of Sight Discovery fund.

Thank You again for all your support!

Jerry Wille, President