Four Initiatives

Bridging Our Generations

Initiative No. 1

Objective: Implement a sustained national awareness campaign to achieve a base of 5% annual growth rate in blood donations from the 18-49-year-old population four years from launch date.

Funding goal: $4,000,000

Since the most frequent blood donors in the U.S. are Baby Boomers with relatively few years of blood-giving left, the Foundation for America’s Blood Centers seeks to fund a branded national public education and blood donation awareness campaign that specifically urges three younger market groups (18-24, 25-34 and 35-49-year-olds) to start donating blood regularly. This can prevent the chronic blood shortages that would result unless younger generations take up the slack after their elders can no longer give blood.

Inspired by the successful collaboration between America’s Blood Centers and the Ad Council in 2004-2007 to boost blood donations among 17-24-year-olds, this new campaign will contain grassroots elements to be executed at the community level to measure the impact on blood donations at community blood centers. A dedicated Web site will encourage, report on and track return visits by blood donors and reinforce the initiative’s messages. In 2006, more than 22,000 people who visited the www.bloodsaves.com Web site during the joint effort with the Ad Council sought out local blood donation sites. Tracking surveys of the Web site’s visitors found that almost half the respondents “definitely” or “probably” would give blood if their communities held blood drives.

Key pillars of this effort are already underway, including in-school education programs and focused campaigns that pave the way for a successful multi-faceted public education and blood donation awareness campaign.

Expanding Donor Diversity

Initiative No. 2

Objective: Decrease the gap in donation rates between Caucasian and minority populations by increasing and retaining a more ethnically diverse donor pool.

Funding goal: $3,200,000

Blood donation rates are low among racial and ethnic minorities. Yet transfusion patients from these groups have the greatest need to receive the closest possible matching blood types because they have rare blood traits specific to their race or ethnicity (e.g., African Americans with sickle cell anemia, who require multiple transfusions of blood, may experience adverse reactions after several transfusions unless the transfused blood is closely matched. A perfect match is likely to be found in another African American.). The Foundation is working to narrow the gap in donor rates between minority and majority groups through a collaboration with community blood centers to develop and execute recruitment and retention programs that appeal to particular African-, Hispanic- and Asian-American communities.

Phases One and Two of this project, market research and design of the market penetration plan, have been completed. Phase Three calls for key pilot programs in four diverse communities for testing and validation. Once validated by community blood centers, the plan will be implemented nationwide in Phase Four.

There is a demographic-driven urgency for this initiative: African-, Hispanic- and Asian-Americans will be 36% of the U.S. population by 2020, yet they only give blood at less than half the rate of the general population. This situation may create a shortage in the availability of certain rare blood types necessary to treat an ever-increasing minority population. A diverse blood supply is crucial to guarantee adequate healthcare for all populations.

Building Community Wellness

Initiative No. 3

Objective: Equip community blood centers to help local residents take better care of their wellness by establishing full-spectrum analytical services in 10 key blood centers around the country four years from launch.

Funding goal: $4,800,000

Community blood centers routinely measure donors’ blood pressure, pulse rate and hemoglobin count, and check for HIV, hepatitis and other diseases. By funding state-of-the-art data gathering and networking systems at major blood centers, the Foundation can help them create an expanded set of analytical services and get a clearer, more comprehensive picture of their communities’ health and wellness. This process will encourage new and repeat blood donors because the additional information obtained by the blood centers will give individuals a more detailed personal health-and-wellness profile. The resulting databases also will yield important insights into the health status of local communities, the regions where they exist and the nation as a whole.

Among other things, the initiative can provide for new instruments that screen blood donors for glucose in such a way that random glucose tests can identify diabetics. That is critically important in a nation where widespread nutritional deficiencies and the growth in child obesity have made Type I and Type II diabetes increasingly prevalent. In Texas alone, 35% of schoolchildren are overweight or obese, compared to 10% a generation ago.

Other new services could include screenings for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) -- which would clarify how much prostate cancer is occurring – lipid profiles (including cholesterol), blood sugar and other risk indicators. Indeed, the Oklahoma Blood Institute and Carter BloodCare are among several centers that already do expanded testing and allow donors to monitor their total cholesterol measurements online. This service will appeal to younger, uninsured individuals who are web-savvy but don’t get regular medical exams.

Advancing Quality Transfusions

Initiative No. 4

Objective: Establish more effective and widespread quality control in blood product tagging by moving from bar-coding to vein-to-vein Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tracking in five pilot blood centers and related hospitals four years from launch.

Funding goal: $3,000,000

By meshing with current and planned bar-coding standards, RFID technology is emerging as the best way to track and expedite the handling of blood products and cut down on transfusion errors.

Seed money from BloodCenter of Wisconsin, Carter BloodCare and Mediware Information Systems, Inc. has supported research into potential RFID applications in blood bank processes since December 2005, and several centers are currently testing RFID technology in their facilities. Private-sector blood industry leaders, here and abroad, also are making RFID investments.

RFID technology certainly can make transfusion medicine safer, more efficient and more cost- effective – IF the industry defines and adopts consistent standards for its use throughout the entire blood supply chain. RFID must be seamlessly integrated with bar coding and labeling requirements that have been, and will be, implemented, as well as with existing blood and transfusion systems. When that happens, hospitals and local blood centers can more readily assure that patients get the right blood at the right time.

NUMBERS TO LIVE BY

The demand for donated blood in the U.S. is critical, and it will continue to grow. Consider the following:

• Every year, five million Americans receive blood from the 14 million units of blood donated by volunteers. Yet fewer than 38% of Americans are eligible to give blood.

• The U.S. needs more than 38,000 blood donations every day.

• One of every 7 people admitted to a hospital will use blood.

• A blood transfusion saves an American’s life every two seconds.

• By 2012, almost 310 million people will live in the U.S., boosting the annual patient demand for blood to more than 17 million units. To meet that demand, the national blood supply must grow at least 5% each year.

• Donated blood components don’t last very long: the shelf life for red cell units is just 42 days, while the shelf life for platelets is just five days.

Certain medical conditions and procedures require large amounts of donated blood.

• Many of the more-than-1 million people diagnosed with cancer each year will need blood – sometimes daily – during their chemotherapy treatment.
• More than 80,000 people in the U.S. – 89% of them African-American – have sickle cell disease, which can require frequent blood transfusions throughout a patient’s life.
• One car accident victim may need up to 100 units of blood.
• A liver transplant requires up to 10 units of donated blood.
• Open heart surgery requires 4 to 6 units of donated blood.

The Foundation for America’s Blood Centers plays an invaluable role in building a volunteer blood supply that meets the needs of medical patients in the U.S. It does this in partnership with not-for-profit community blood centers in manage over 600 donor centers each year and provide blood to more than 3,000 hospitals and healthcare facilities nationwide.