WHAT INSPIRES THE JEFFREY CAMPBELL EVANS FOUNDATION?

The family of Jeffrey “Jeff ” Campbell Evans created a foundation to help transplant recipients and their families in 2015. Evans, who was 6-foot-4, athletic, and passionate about cooking, died Aug. 8, 2006, at age 26. He developed flulike symptoms in 2003 after volunteering to cook at a large charity event in South Georgia. A few days later, X-rays revealed that his heart was enlarged — roughly the size of a small soccer ball — and that 80% of his heart’s function had been destroyed by an unknown virus. He was on the list for a heart transplant for three years but never received one.

■ The foundation has six (soon to be seven) fully furnished, two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartments in the Atlanta area where the families of transplant patients can live during the transplant experience. The apartments are close to Emory, Children’s Health Care of Atlanta and Piedmont Hospital, the major transplant hospitals in the region.

The foundation apartments are one of five housing options available in Atlanta to transplant patients and their families. The others are Mason Guest House, Ronald McDonald House, Atlanta Hospitality House and Guest Center at Piedmont.

■ There were 1,077 lung, liver, heart, kidney and pancreas transplants performed in 2019 at Piedmont, CHOA, Emory and Augusta University. The cost for these surgeries varies but can be several hundred thousand dollars, and can even top $1 million.

Learn more at jcevansfoundation.org/

What the foundation does: According to the Georgia Transplant Foundation: