An increase in organ donation, particularly among minorities, would significantly reduce disparities in access to organ transplantation. Our local community partners, Cleveland MOTTEP (Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program) and LifeBanc (organ and tissue recovery agency for northeast Ohio), have worked to educate the public through a number of outreach activities. While such educational campaigns have been associated with some improvements in donation rates, many members of minority groups are reluctant to donate organs. The driver's license is the most common means to sign up to become an organ donor. Yet prior efforts have not aggressively targeted individuals at the time they obtain their driver's license. We hypothesized that understanding barriers and facilitators to donation among minorities and using this information to target individuals at the time they obtain their first driver's license would enhance signing of organ donor cards. We therefore identified barriers and facilitators to donation among diverse groups and used this information to develop a 5-minute video to encourage donation among groups that have been historically reluctant to donate. We now propose a community-based randomized controlled trial involving 450 intervention and 450 control patrons 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 interview intervention and control patrons after they leave the OBMV to determine whether they signed an organ donor card and the reasons for their decision. We will also determine the effect of the video intervention on willingness to donate organs while living. Our community partners, LifeBanc and MOTTEP will help train and supervise our study staff, troubleshoot problems along the way, and help analyze and interpret the findings. More importantly, they are ideally situated to disseminate our findings. If our intervention is successful, they will collaborate with us to expand the intervention to additional sites such as schools, churches, and other Ohio BMV branches. They will also share details of the intervention with other organ procurement agencies throughout the country and with other branches of MOTTEP located in 16 cities with large minority populations.
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