– Hospital Challenge Aims to Increase Public Awareness and Organ Donor Designations –

Pittsburgh, August 13, 2014 – The Center for Organ Recovery & Education (CORE) is pleased to recognize seven hospitals across its West Virginia service area for their participation in the 2014 West Virginia Hospital Challenge.  The challenge, an initiative of West Virginia Hospital Association, took place from Feb. 1 to April 30 and aims to increase public awareness and organ donor designations within a health care setting.  Each activity, which ranges from distributing donation materials to adding awareness messages to employee paystubs, is assigned a point value. Participants strive to achieve gold, silver and bronze level totals.

“We are pleased to congratulate our West Virginia-based hospital partners that met the challenge and did some fantastic work.  We’d like to thank everyone who promoted this wonderful program and helped us to inspire organ donation awareness,” said Susan Stuart, president and CEO of CORE.  “Last year alone, organ donors made more than 28,000 transplants possible. Let’s hope that our work with the 2014 West Virginia Hospital Challenge can help to save more lives this year.”

The following West Virginia-based hospitals were recognized:

• Davis Medical Center (Gold)
• Montgomery General Hospital (Gold)
• Pleasant Valley Hospital (Gold)
• St. Francis Hospital (Gold)
• Thomas Memorial Hospital (Gold)
• West Virginia University (Gold)
• Ohio Valley Medical Center (Silver)

About CORE

The Center for Organ Recovery & Education (CORE) is one of 58 federally designated not-for-profit organ procurement organizations (OPOs) in the United States.  CORE works closely with donor families and designated health care professionals to coordinate the surgical recovery of organs, tissues and corneas for transplantation.  CORE also facilitates the computerized matching of donated organs and placement of corneas.  With headquarters in Pittsburgh and an office in Charleston, West Virginia, CORE oversees a region that encompasses 155 hospitals and almost six million people throughout western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Chemung County, NY.  For more information, visit www.core.org or call 1-800-DONORS-7.