UA Healthcare Management Student Wins First Place in National Essay Competition

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – More than 100,000 people are waiting to receive a life changing organ transplant, but many of those people are waiting in vain. Despite national legislation governing the organ procurement system, a shortage of donors remains.

Luckily, for Allison Clemmons’ mother, a kidney was available when she needed it. Now Clemmons, a senior in healthcare management in The University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Commerce, has written an essay about organ transplantation that won the undergraduate division of the 2009 Richard J. Stull Student Essay Competition sponsored by the American College of Healthcare Executives, or ACHE.

“My mom had a kidney transplant when I was a junior in high school,” Clemmons said. Her mother is doing fine and accompanied Clemmons to Chicago earlier this year to attend the ACHE National Congress and see her daughter present her paper at the convention and receive a $3,000 prize.

Clemmons was born and raised in Canton, Mich., but returned with her family to Alabama and now lives in Chelsea. She will graduate in August and plans to attend the University of Alabama in Birmingham to work on a joint Master of Science in Health Administration/MBA degree to prepare for a career in health care administration. She also has minor in biology.

Clemmons said she wrote the winning paper as part of her class work and was encouraged by Dr. Eric Williams, associate professor of health care management, to submit it in the ACHE competition. She said she worked on the paper about six months and “revised it three or four times.” It will be published in the Journal of Health Care Management sometime this summer.

“One of our students has finished first, second or third in this competition in seven of the last 10 years,” Williams said, “and this is the second time we have had the first place winner.”

In her paper, Clemmons writes: “Without a doubt, organ transplantation has been one of the most significant breakthroughs in modern medicine, and with that success has come enormous demand. Today, there are currently 78,034 patients waiting for a kidney transplant, 16,012 patients waiting for a liver transplant, 2,708 patients waiting for a heart transplant, and 2,069 patients waiting for a lung transplant (United Network for Organ Sharing, 2008). The problem is very simple, there are not enough organs donated to accommodate our needs despite decades of public education on the virtues of organ donation.”

The paper examines the economic aspect of organ transplantation, such as a death benefit for the families of those who agree to become organ donors or a tax exemption for donors. It also takes on the thorny question of selling organs.

Clemmons said the waiting list for organs will continue to grow at a rapid pace, and she thinks it is the government’s obligation to provide care for donors and expand opportunities for people on the transplant waiting list.

“I think we need to concentrate on educating the public about the entire organ transplantation process,” she said.