Cheryl Jacobs has been a clinical transplant social worker for living donors at the University of Minnesota-Medical Center for 23 years and currently, conducts psychosocial research on living kidney donors. She was instrumental in developing the psychosocial criteria used at their Living Donor Program for all solid organ donors (kidney, liver, lung, pancreas, and intestine) and for their Nondirected Kidney Donation Program, which was the first in the U.S. in 1999. Beyond providing clinical and advocacy services at her institution and State level, she created a living donor assistance fund in 2000 to assist donors at her program. Over the years, she has presented extensively at numerous national transplant conferences, and has conducted research and published on a variety of topics related to the psychosocial and financial impacts of living donation.
She has served on various National Committees and Consensus Conference Groups to develop Psychosocial Guidelines and practices for living donors as they’ve evolved over time. In addition to being a previous board member on the UNOS Living Donor Committee, she currently serves on the AST's Executive Committee for the Psychosocial Community of Practice. Her current focus is studying their center’s nondirected-paired exchange donors.