Faculty
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Pamela Albert RN, BSN, CPTC began her career in transplantation over 30 years ago and has had the opportunity to participate in many aspects of the process since then. At New England Donor Services (formerly New England Organ Bank) Pam has worked as a donation and hospital development coordinator, educational specialist, donor family liaison, aftercare coordinator, Director of Tissue Operations and Donor Family Services. She is currently serving as the Senior Director of Tissue Donor Services Resource Development and is responsible for ongoing authorization training for tissue operations staff as well as coaching and mentoring new leaders in the organization.
Pam has lectured across the country on topics relating to contact between donor families and recipients, as well as grief and loss issues in the workplace. Pam is published in both Progress in Transplantation and Critical Care Nursing Clinics of North America and received The National MTF Donor Family Care Award in 2000 for her work with donor families.
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Jennifer (Jen) Timar RN, BSN, CPTC has worked at Gift of Life Donor Program since 2004, as both an Advanced Practice Coordinator and Transplant Coordinator, she faciliated optimal organ donor processes, including the family conversation, medical management, and operative recovery. Jen has also served in varoious leadership roles, guiding and developing new staff, and has presented on both local and national levels.
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Lara Moretti, LSW, CT has been providing bereavement counseling and support for families of organ and tissue donors since 2003 at Gift of Life Donor Program (GLDP). Currently the Director of Family Support Services at GLDP, Lara has served as secretary and co-chair of the AOPO Donor Family Services Council. She received her BS in Education and Social Policy from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL and her MS in Social Work from Columbia University in New York and was recently named a Fellow in Thanatology: Death, Dying and Bereavement. Lara has presented at AOPO's and NATCO’s national conferences and also at the national conference for the Association for Death Education and Counseling and the Society for Transplant Social Workers on donor family aftercare. In 2011, she co-authored an article about the unique grief of donor families in Progress in Transplantation.
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Heather Gardiner, PhD, MPH is an associate professor of social and behavioral sciences in Temple University’s College of Public Health. Dr. Gardiner directs the Health Disparities Research Lab and the Office of Community Engaged Research and Practice, which leads growth of the college’s interdisciplinary community engagement activities. She is a mixed-methodologist with advanced training and experience with both qualitative and quantitative research designs and methodologies, including the development and implementation of protocols for in-depth and focus group interviews, inductive and deductive qualitative coding schemas and processes, structured and semi-structured surveys, and advanced statistical methods (e.g., structural equation modeling, multivariable analyses). Her program of research lies at the intersection of interpersonal health communication and organ and tissue donation and transplantation. Across these areas of research, her primary goals have been to improve the organ and tissue donation process in the United States, reduce transplant inequities, and increase access to transplantation for marginalized communities.