You Have Been Their Advocate for Years. Now Comes the Handoff.
Join us Wednesday, September 16 for the AST Transition Toolkit Webinar for Caregivers.
If you are raising a teen with a transplant, you already know the rhythm by heart. You know which medication goes with breakfast and which one cannot be taken with grapefruit. You know the lab schedule, the pharmacy's hold music, and the exact tone in your child's voice that means something is off.
And now your teen is growing up. At some point, they will be the one calling the pharmacy, the one sitting alone in an adult clinic exam room, the one deciding whether to take a dose on a busy morning. That shift is one of the most important things you will help them prepare for, and it is also one of the least talked about.
If your stomach tightened reading that, you are not being overprotective. You are being accurate. When most parents loosen the reins, the worst case is a late assignment or a forgotten dentist appointment. For our kids, the worst case is rejection. A stretch of missed doses can cost an organ, and organs are not easy to come by twice. That is a weight other families do not carry, and it is why “let them figure it out on their own” has never been advice you could take.
Your vigilance is not anxiety. It is the reason your child is here.
Here is the part that helps. The stakes are exactly why the practice needs to start now, while you are still standing in the room. Every refill your teen calls in with you nearby, every pillbox they fill and you quietly double check, is a mistake caught at the kitchen table instead of caught by a lab result. Handing over responsibility in small, supervised pieces is not lowering the bar for your child. It is the safest possible way to raise it.
That is what this webinar is for.
About the webinar
Preparing Them to Take the Lead An interactive webinar for parents and caregivers of teens and young adult transplant recipients, featuring the AST Transition Toolkit. Wednesday, September 16, 2026 6:00 PM ET / 5:00 PM CT / 4:00 PM MT / 3:00 PM PT One hour. Free to attend. Registration required.
You will hear from three experts who come at this from different angles:
Beth Logan, PhD, attending transplant psychologist at Boston Children's Hospital
Beverly Kosmach-Park, DNP, RN, FAAN, clinical nurse specialist in liver and intestine transplant and Director of Transplant Transition at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh
Madelyn Flickinger, a transitioned pediatric transplant recipient and transplantation advocate
We will walk through the caregiver side of the AST Transition Toolkit, show you how to find what you need quickly, and talk honestly about how to hand over responsibility a little at a time without letting anything drop. The session closes with a live Q&A, so bring the question you have been meaning to ask someone. Chances are good another caregiver on the call is wondering the same thing.
Cannot make it live? Register anyway. The recording will be shared with registrants afterward, so you can watch it at whatever hour actually works for your family.
About the AST Transition Toolkit
The AST Transition Toolkit was developed by the American Society of Transplantation's Pediatric Community of Practice to support adolescents and young adults moving from pediatric to adult transplant care.
You have been the caregiver. Now you get to be the coach.
For years, you were the one doing it. Ordering the refills, tracking the labs, carrying the entire schedule in your head so your child could get on with being a child. That was the right job, and you did it.
The next job is different, and honestly it is harder. You step off the field and onto the sideline. Not gone, never gone, just no longer running every play. A coach on demand, there the moment your teen needs you and quiet the rest of the time, so they can find out what it feels like to handle this themselves.
That is a hard shift to make when you are the only one holding the playbook. This toolkit is built differently. Every major topic runs in three lanes at once, one for the teen, one for the caregiver, one for the transplant team, each written in the language that reader actually needs. Your teen gets their own playbook. So does the care team. So do you.
Take medication habits:
Your teen reads “Med Smarts: How to Be a Pro at Taking Your Meds”, written for them, in their voice, without a parent narrating it
You read “Healthy Medication Habits”, which is about how to step back gradually without stepping away
Their care team works from the provider section on adherence
Same subject, three doors in. Your teen can read their own page without you narrating it over their shoulder, which is exactly what stepping back looks like in practice.
What is in the caregiver section
The caregiver section is built to be browsed, not read cover to cover. You pick the topic you need today. Current topics include:
Medications
Anti-rejection medications and other medications after transplant
Building healthy medication habits as your teen gains independence
Teaching your teen to fill their own weekly pillbox
Managing pharmacy and prescription refills
Staying on track with medications
Health and monitoring
Rejection 101
Lab monitoring
Vaccines after transplant
Staying healthy, including the long-term effects of immunosuppression on skin and bone health
Exercise
Growing up
Getting a new primary care provider as your teen moves toward adult care
Talking about their transplant
Mental health after transplant
That is not the whole list. The caregiver section covers more ground than we can fit here, so it is worth a browse of your own. Every one of these has a teen-facing twin, with titles like “Small Pills, Big Job” and “Rejection 101: What You Should Know,” so you can hand your child something written for them instead of walking them through it yourself.
Who is behind this
This one is close to home for us. Transplant Families is a program of the Children's Organ Transplant Association. Since 1986, COTA has worked to make sure no child or young adult is kept off a transplant list for lack of money, and we stay with those families for a lifetime, not just through the surgery. Transplant Families brings together the parents and patients who are living this day to day.
We are presenting this webinar in partnership with the American Society of Transplantation, which brings the clinical expertise behind the toolkit itself. Between us, you get the medical guidance and the lived experience in the same hour, which is usually what our families are actually looking for.
Why this one is worth the hour
The transition years are when too many of our kids quietly fall through the cracks. Not because anyone stopped caring, but because responsibility moved before the skills did. The toolkit exists to make that handoff gradual and deliberate, and this webinar is the guided tour.
It is free, it is one hour, and if the night gets away from you, the recording will be waiting.
This content was developed independently by the American Society of Transplantation and supported by a financial contribution from Sanofi.
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