The wait for a life-saving organ transplant can be an emotional and uncertain process for thousands of patients across the country. But in Utah, many patients spend far less time on the waiting list compared to those in other states — a difference that can mean everything for people like ShayLee Hunter.
Hunter, who recently earned the title of Mrs. Petite Utah 2025, first entered the pageant world on a whim.
“I was just going through Facebook one day and I saw a local scholarship pageant in my city, and I was like, what do I got to lose?” she said.
Once she began competing, she quickly learned contestants are encouraged to choose a personal platform.
“I did not realize how intricate pageants were, and the first meeting was pretty much you need a platform — something that you're passionate about, something that you want to fix in the world, something that you want to educate, bring awareness to,” she said.
For Hunter, that platform was clear. She has lived with chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction since she was six months old.
“At 6 months old, I was diagnosed with chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction. At 2 years old, I got my first feeding tube and have been on TPN ever since,” she said. “At 16, I got my ostomy bag and then shortly after that, I went for a transplant evaluation and got accepted for transplant and have just kind of been waiting since then.”
She is one of the hundreds of Utahns — and tens of thousands nationwide — waiting for the gift of a donor organ.
How the transplant list works
Dr. James Trotter, medical director of liver transplants at Intermountain Medical Center, says the hospital performs a solid-organ transplant “about every 16 hours, around the clock.”
When a patient is approved for transplant, their medical team adds them to a single national list managed by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).
“So they manage the list nationally,” Dr. Trotter said. “All medical care is local and so, although patients are listed nationally, they receive their transplants here locally.”
The national waiting list doesn’t function like a simple line. Priority is based on medical urgency — not how long someone has been waiting.
“So once a patient is listed and placed on the national list, they’re prioritized based on a priority score,” Dr. Trotter said. “There’s stipulations that the sicker a patient is, the more frequent their priority score has to be updated, as often as once weekly.”
Other factors such as organ size, blood and tissue compatibility, and geography also determine who receives an offer.
The role of Utah’s Organ Procurement Organization
When an organ becomes available, an organ procurement organization (OPO) takes over the allocation process. In Utah, that OPO is DonorConnect.
“An organ procurement organization or an OPO — we're a federally designated organization,” said Carrie Poole, DonorConnect’s director of tissue services. “We are that bridge between the donor hospital and transplant.”
Poole and her team manage everything from securing consent to entering donor information into the UNOS system and coordinating transportation.
“We are given that list by UNOS, and we allocate within a really pretty strict policy,” Poole said. “Our allocation coordinators say it time and again that they want to make sure that every candidate gets the option. You know, if they're next in line, that they get the option for that organ.”
Transplant centers then evaluate the offer and determine whether their patient is ready.
“They take some time on their end, you know, look at their candidate, make sure that they're in a place to be able to receive a transplant,” Poole said. “Are they the best match? And then they get to say yes or no, and we'll just keep going through that list until we find the right home.”
Why Utah’s wait times are so short
Utah stands out nationally for its remarkably fast transplant timelines.
“The waiting times here in Utah are exceptionally short,” Dr. Trotter said.
Nationally, kidney patients may wait three to five years. In Utah, the wait averages 11 to 19 months.
For heart transplants, the national average ranges from six to 12 months. In Utah, patients may wait as little as five months.
And liver wait times are even more striking.
“Wait times are measured in days or weeks and not months or years,” Dr. Trotter said.
At Intermountain, liver transplant patients may wait as little as 22 days — compared to the national average of one to two years.
‘A story she’ll keep telling’
Behind every number is a life and a story — people like Hunter, who uses her platform to raise awareness and advocate for others waiting for a transplant.
“I've become more open into sharing that,” she said. “And I think with people willing to listen and want that education and awareness, it makes it so much easier to do so.”
She says the connections she makes along the way motivate her to continue speaking out.
“I'm just here for the ride, honestly,” Hunter said. “I think the thing I love the most is the people that I get to connect to that just literally say, you've changed my life.”