An increase in organ donation, particularly among minorities, would significantly reduce disparities in accessto organ transplantation. Our local community partners, Cleveland MOTTEP (Minority Organ TissueTransplant Education Program) and LifeBanc (organ and tissue recovery agency for northeast Ohio), haveworked to educate the public through a number of outreach activities. While such educational campaignshave been associated with some improvements in donation rates, many members of minority groups arereluctant to donate organs.The driver's license is the most common means to sign up to become an organ donor. Yet prior efforts havenot aggressively targeted individuals at the time they obtain their driver's license. We hypothesized thatunderstanding barriers and facilitators to donation among minorities and using this information to targetindividuals at the time they obtain their first driver's license would enhance signing of organ donor cards. Wetherefore identified barriers and facilitators to donation among diverse groups and used this information todevelop a 5-minute video to encourage donation among groups that have been historically reluctant todonate.We now propose a community-based randomized controlled trial involving 450 intervention and 450 controlpatrons visiting 68 Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle (OBMV) branches to obtain an initial driver's license.Intervention patrons will watch the video prior to entering the OBMV. Study personnel will interviewintervention and control patrons after they leave the OBMV to determine whether they signed an organ donorcard and the reasons for their decision. We will also determine the effect of the video intervention onwillingness to donate organs while living.Our community partners, LifeBanc and MOTTEP will help train and supervise our study staff, troubleshootproblems along the way, and help analyze and interpret the findings. More importantly, they are ideallysituated to disseminate our findings. If our intervention is successful, they will collaborate with us to expandthe intervention to additional sites such as schools, churches, and other Ohio BMV branches. They will alsoshare details of the intervention with other organ procurement agencies throughout the country and withother branches of MOTTEP located in 16 cities with large minority populations.
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