Enhancing and expanding voluntary donor participation in a wide range of transfusion and transplantation programs is an extremely important aspect of blood center operations. Without an adequate supply of donated blood and tissues, patient care will be compromised. This Program Project Grant is designed to encourage the active involvement of experts in a broad range of disciplines to effectively interact on donor issues. Specifically, a Personnel Core (Project I) has been formed to include experts in transfusion and transplantation medicine, behavior modeling, environmental and social psychology, marketing, education, cost- benefit/cost-effectiveness analysis, biostatistics, computer programming, and data analysis. These individuals will meet weekly to assist the principal investigators of the three individuals projects to meet their study goals. Project II, """"""""Blood Donor Retention,"""""""" involves a detailed analysis of first-time, second-time, committed (frequent), and lapsed donors to identify those factors that are positively-associated with the donation process. Once these positive factors are determined, intervention strategies will be designed to build on these """"""""positive factors"""""""" to increase both donor retention rates and donation frequency. Project III, """"""""Recruitment of Unrelated Bone Marrow Donors"""""""" seeks to further improve on our demonstrated effectiveness in enlisting the participation of regular whole blood donors in an unrelated bone marrow donor registry. Primary emphasis in the renewal proposal will be on expanding the recruitment process from our fixed collection sites to mobile campaigns. Scheduled mobile campaigns will allow us to determine whether any of a variety of """"""""test"""""""" informational materials delivered to individuals prior to the donation visit will increase the number of consents for registry participation that are turned in at the blood drive. In addition, we will continue to evaluate the level of donor commitment to the program as measured by: 1) consent for blood drawing for additional testing; 2) marrow donation; and 3) donor loss. Finally, we will determine our ability to share our recruitment strategies with other institutions and monitor the success of these efforts. The fourth project, """"""""Routine Donation BY Apheresis Technology,"""""""" is designed to assess the quality of stored apheresis products and to determine the extent to which apheresis technology can be used to facilitate the type and amount of blood products collected per donor visit. The feasibility of collecting two units of red cells by apheresis technology per donor visit has been demonstrated. Additional studies are required to document the viability and function of stored apheresis rbc's and platelets before studies can be initiated on the optimum methods of educating donors about this new technology and enlisting their support. Finally, a cost- benefit/cost-effective analysis of how to best incorporate this new technology into routine blood center operations is required. In summary, this Program Project Grant represents a multi-faceted approach to increasing donor involvement in blood center programs.
| Bolgiano, D C; Smith, S; Slichter, S J (1993) Strategies to recruit plateletpheresis donors from a registry of HLA-typed, unrelated, bone marrow donors. Transfusion 33:675-8 |
| Meyer, D; Bolgiano, D C; Sayers, M et al. (1993) Red cell collection by apheresis technology. Transfusion 33:819-24 |
