Some 90,0000 people in the United States are awaiting a kidney donation. One California mother took it into her own hands to try and get a donor, and you've probably already seen her plea for help.

Along northbound Interstate 5 by the Sacramento International Airport stands a billboard.

"I need a kidney transplant," said Cynthia Hall.

Hall hopes that with her billboard she will reach the right person.

"Six years ago, I got a call from my doctor that my kidneys are severely damaged," Hall said.

Her husband Art said they knew they would reach the point where they needed to expand their outreach one day.

"We have been doing a homegrown campaign, if you will," Art said. "Making flyers, putting them up at businesses. We have done social media campaigns. I thought I need to take this to the next level to see what's possible to do and that's where I thought I would try a billboard."

That's when Marquee Media received a call from a friend who heard about the Hall family.

"When we formed our company, we wanted to have business with purpose. This is the highest purpose we can probably do," said Jeff Joaquin with Marquee Media.

There are 11 billboards across the Sacramento, California, region, reaching about 2 million people every week. There are also dozens of billboards across the country.

"We help companies and brands sell products, help their businesses along, but we can have a higher calling to help somebody get a kidney and save a life, it's just something immeasurable," Joaquin said.

The Hall family hopes it raises more awareness about kidney diseases.

"There are millions of people out there with this disease and they do not know they have it," Cynthia said.

"If anything comes of all this, besides her getting a kidney donor, is raising the awareness of kidney disease out there," Art said.

The hope is that on their four-year wedding anniversary, they will get the call that will give Cynthia a second chance at life.

"It means the world to us and my son, he's 14. I want to see him go to college, I want to see him get married, I want to be with him and this will give me a chance to live my life to the fullest," Cynthia said.

If you would like to help you can reach the Hall family at akidneyforcynthia@gmail.com or at 916-276-7603.

Watch the video above for the full story.

BOSTON, Mass. — Often known as the silent killer, kidney disease impacts an estimated 35 million Americans.

Now, there's a new Smartphone app aiming to help break down barriers and diagnose patients early.

Paula LeClair is with a company called Healthy.io. A few weeks ago their app, "Minuteful Kidney: Home Urine Test," received FDA clearance. No trip to the doctor's office is needed.

"What we want to do is test everyone early and the earliest easiest way to do that is through the urine," LeClair said.

Instead, using a urine sample at home, people can run a screening test using their smartphone. Results usually appear in less than a minute.

"It’s not until late stages that they become symptomicatic, if they become, they are close to needing dialysis or a transplant," LeClair added.

There are broader implications to all this as well. People of color are four times more likely to have chronic kidney disease. The hope is that by breaking down barriers, especially for people who may not have access to a primary care provider, early detection can still be possible.

"It's such a large problem," she noted.

While this is the first app of its kind to be FDA approved for at-home kidney screenings, it's part of a growing list of FDA-approved mobile medical apps, including EKG readers, blood-pressure cuffs and pulse oximeters.

A recent medical breakthrough could help people get organ transplants faster.

“This is really the first attempt to move this into the clinical realm,” Dr. Robert Montgomery, the director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, said.

Dr. Montgomery and the rest of the team at NYU Langone Health recently completed the first investigational transplant of a genetically engineered pig kidney, to a human body.

“We had a genetically-edited pig kidney and a recently deceased human whose family essentially donated her body to participate in this test to see if this pig kidney would work,” he explained.

It’s a process known as xenotransplantation.

“There have been attempts at trying to advance xenotransplantation using animal organs for human use for about 50 years,” Dr. Montgomery explained. He said the process for making this surgery possible started about four years ago. They completed the surgery at the end of September. Doctors kept the donor on a ventilator. For 54 hours after the surgery, they monitored the donor to watch the kidney’s function and check for signs of rejection.

“We’ve been sort of stuck in the preclinical animal studies for a very long period of time and this really gives us the confidence because the kidney worked so well and it wasn't rejected. It gives us the confidence that we can now move to a living human trial. I think that is going to happen in the next year or two,” Dr. Montgomery said. “What this will do is really allow, I think, anyone who needs a transplant to be able to get it. And not have to wait for years and maybe get too sick or die before they get it.”

There are 106,713 patients currently on the national waitlist, according to statistics from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network data pulled by the United Network for Organ Sharing on October 20, 2021. About 90,259 are in need of a kidney transplant.

“The 90,000 people on the list, that's really just a fraction of people who need a kidney,” said Dr. Michelle Josephson, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago. Josephson is also a part of the American Society of Nephrology.

“If you look over time it has increased, and you say well why has it increased? I think the numbers increased one because we’re just not keeping up with demand...the other is that as we’ve gotten more knowledgeable about how to manage transplant recipients, we’re more willing to offer transplantation as a viable option to more people with perhaps more diseases and co-morbidities than we once felt capable or comfortable doing,” Dr. Josephson said.

Dr. Joseph Vassalotti with the National Kidney Foundation said that waitlist could take years.

“In parts of the country it might only be one year to wait for a deceased donor kidney. And in other parts of the country it might be 10 years, so there are some differences based on your blood type and where you live,” he said.

The possibility of xenotransplantation to help reduce wait times doesn’t come without controversy.

“There are barriers, people worried about the possibility of taking an infection from the animal world and bringing it into humans, so that's one big concern. There's been also concern that there's specific antibodies that humans might have against pig kidneys,” Dr. Josephson said.

Dr. Montgomery said he worked with a team of more than 100 people to manage those concerns.

“Everything that we did was really vetted through ethicists, through legal experts, religious experts,” he explained.

And it will be a while before this type of transplant is available to the public.

“It’s probably going to be several years before we can have large-scale clinical trials— to see this forward,” Dr. Vassalotti said.

Related video above: U.S. looks to preserve Gaza truce, push peace talks

A Jewish man killed during an eruption of Mideast violence has given new life to an Arab woman in bitter times.

Yigal Yehoshua, 56, died May 17 after being pelted with rocks amid clashes between Arabs and Jews in Israel's mixed city of Lod.

The ethnic violence was triggered by protests and clashes in Jerusalem that also ignited an 11-day Gaza War.

In Lod and other mixed cities inside Israel, groups of Arabs and Jews fought each other in the streets, torched cars and businesses, and savagely beat up anyone from the other side who crossed their path.

But after days and nights of war and ugliness, there was a rare moment of hope, when Randa Aweis, a 58-year-old mother of six, got one of Yehoshua's kidneys after a 10-year wait.

He was registered as an organ donor; the Jewish man and the Arab woman were medically a match.

"I could not believe it," she said in an interview Monday at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. "I'm telling you, I couldn't believe it."

"They saved me," she said. "People say he was a good man, that he didn't do any harm, so why was he murdered? ... That's forbidden. There must be peace between Jews and Arabs, real peace."

Israelis long accustomed to periodic unrest in Gaza and the occupied West Bank were shocked by the violence, which hit closer to home than at any point since the 2000 Palestinian intifada, or uprising. At times, it seemed like the start of a civil war.

Israel's Arab citizens, who make up 20% of the population, said the violence was rooted in longstanding grievances. They have citizenship, including the right to vote, but face widespread discrimination. They also have close familial ties to the Palestinians and largely identify with their cause, leading many Jewish Israelis to view them with suspicion.

"I share in the sorrow of the family of the late Yigal Yehoshua who was murdered in a lynch carried out by Arab rioters in Lod," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said when the death was announced last week.

"We will settle accounts with whoever participated in this murder; nobody will escape punishment," he added.

Police have arrested several suspects in connection with the violence.

Aweis never met Yehoshua but she spoke to his widow on a tearful video call. She hopes to visit his family in person once she has recovered from the transplant.

"Yigal saved me, and as much as I say thank you to the family, to everyone, it's not enough."