Immersive workshops and collaboratives will bring together multidisciplinary experts to tackle some of the most pressing challenges in organ donation and transplantation.
The Organ Donation and Transplantation Alliance (The Alliance) will offer four specialty pre-meeting programs on Monday, September 14, immediately preceding the 2026 National Critical Issues Forum in New Orleans. Designed to provide focused education, the pre-meetings provide attendees with an opportunity to engage in deeper exploration of specialized topics through interactive discussions, case-based learning, and multidisciplinary collaboration. This year’s offerings span lung donation, medicolegal death investigation, transplant quality, and payer engagement, reflecting the increasingly interconnected challenges facing donation and transplantation professionals.
Rather than serving as traditional educational sessions, each program has been intentionally designed around active participation and the exchange of real-world experiences. Participants will examine emerging evidence, discuss operational challenges, and identify strategies that can be implemented within their own organizations and across the broader system of care.
Four Specialized Learning Opportunities
The 2026 pre-meeting lineup reflects The Alliance’s continued commitment to convening professionals around the issues that matter most to the donation and transplantation community.
American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) Lung Donation Workshop
Sponsored by Paragonix | 12pm to 5pm CT | View Agenda
Developed in partnership with the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST), this multidisciplinary workshop will explore critical issues affecting lung donation and transplantation. Sessions will examine donation after circulatory death (DCD), donor management from cardiac, pulmonary, and critical care perspectives, emerging lung preservation technologies, evolving OPTN policy, and interactive case discussions that challenge participants to apply clinical decision-making to complex donor scenarios.
AlloEd Donation and Death Investigation Workshop
11am to 5pm CT | View Agenda
The Donation and Death Investigation Workshop will focus on strengthening collaboration between organ procurement organizations and medicolegal death investigation professionals. The program addresses one of the field’s most significant opportunities for improvement: reducing the number of transplantable organs lost because of inconsistent practices, limited education, and communication barriers between donation professionals and medical examiners and coroners. Participants will explore topics including forensic evidence preservation, brain death and DCD processes, forensic toxicology, pediatric donation, forensic imaging, documentation, and best practices for navigating shared cases.
The Alliance Transplant Payer Collaborative
Sponsored by Sanofi | 1pm to 5pm CT
The Transplant Payer Collaborative will bring together stakeholders representing transplant finance, reimbursement, payer organizations, and transplant administration to examine the evolving financial landscape surrounding transplantation. Through facilitated discussion and collaborative problem-solving, participants will explore opportunities to improve alignment among stakeholders, strengthen reimbursement practices, support equitable patient access, and advance long-term sustainability across the transplant system.
The Alliance National Transplant & Donation Quality Collaborative
1pm to 5pm CT | View Agenda
Recognizing that quality has become an essential organizational competency across both transplant programs and organ procurement organizations, the National Transplant & Donation Quality Collaborative will focus on practical leadership strategies that strengthen quality culture and organizational performance. Participants will engage in sessions addressing change management, patient safety communication, psychological safety, and interactive workshops centered on root cause analysis and event review.
Building Communities Around Shared Challenges
While each pre-meeting addresses a distinct area of practice, together they reflect a broader vision for advancing organ donation and transplantation through collaboration across disciplines.
Increasingly, the most significant challenges facing the field require expertise that extends beyond any single profession or organization. Whether improving donor utilization, strengthening quality systems, navigating evolving reimbursement models, or enhancing collaboration with medicolegal partners, meaningful progress depends upon bringing diverse perspectives together to identify shared solutions.
The Alliance’s specialty collaboratives and workshops are designed to foster exactly that type of engagement, creating environments where participants can move beyond presentations to meaningful dialogue, peer learning, and actionable strategies that continue long after the meeting concludes.
“The strength of our community has always been its willingness to learn from one another,” Karri Hobson-Pape, Executive Director of The Alliance. “Each of these pre-meetings creates space for thoughtful discussion, practical problem-solving, and collaboration that participants can immediately take back to their organizations. Our goal is not simply to share information, but to strengthen the relationships and professional networks that help move the field forward.”
Registration Information
The specialty pre-meetings will take place on Monday, September 14, 2026, immediately preceding the 2026 National Critical Issues Forum, which will be held September 15-16 in New Orleans.
Attendance at all pre-meetings is limited to registered National Critical Issues Forum attendees. Each workshop requires separate add-on registration during the Forum registration process, and space may be limited.
