Governor Cuomo signed an executive order Monday to boost the state’s historically low organ donor rolls.The order calls for the Department of Health to work with the Transplant Council, providers and hospitals to offer New Yorkers more opportunities to register as donors: when applying for licenses and government benefits, for example.

The governor also signed a bill making Lauren’s Law permanent in New York State. Named for Lauren Shields of Rockland County, who received a life-saving heart transplant at age 9, the law makes the opportunity to register as an organ donor a more explicit and integral part of driver’s license renewal forms.

Fewer than a third of residents age 18 and older are enrolled in the New York State Donate Life Registry. The national average is 51 percent. Meanwhile, nearly 10,000 New Yorkers are waiting, and sometimes dying, for organ transplants.

Helen Irving, the president of Live On New York, the city's federally designated organ procurement organization, said improving those numbers “is going to have to be a key element" of what the group's everyday strategy.

Irving said she is encouraged by the Health Department’s new and improved donor registry that now allows New Yorkers to register as donors entirely online. Signing up on the healthcare exchange, she added, is “the biggest opportunity we have in front of us” to increase donor registration.  

Governor Cuomo signed legislation last year allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to register their consent to donate when applying for a driver license, learner permit or non-driver ID. Since the law took effect last February, nearly 21,000 young New Yorkers have connected to the donor registry.