(P-BB-51) Increasing Blood Diversity: How Blood Center Websites Tackle Critical Blood Shortages for Sickle Cell Patients through Recruitment of African-American Donors

Background/Case Studies: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a life-threatening condition that affects 1/500 African-Americans. Patients with SCD rely on transfusions from closely-matched healthy blood donors of similar ethnicity; however, African-Americans are under-represented among blood donors due to multiple complex factors including mistrust of medical systems. Blood center websites are a "virtual interface" with the community that may convey the need for African-American persons to donate blood for SCD patients.

Study

Design/Methods: We selected 12 blood systems or centers in 3 categories (large blood systems, regional systems, and hospital-based blood centers). A popular search engine (Google) was mined using the name of each blood center and the keywords "sickle cell disease" and "African-American" to identify websites. An inductive approach was used to analyze commonalities, differences, patterns, and themes in the study findings.

Results/Findings: All 12 blood centers had an official website; 10/12 (83%) blood centers had a webpage dedicated to SCD or African-American donors that was discoverable using our search terms. Only 9/12 blood centers (75%) defined sickle cell disease and its adverse health outcomes for patients.
Most websites used images of persons of African descent (92%), and referred to the need for such blood donors specifically for SCD patients (83%). Only 5/12 websites (42%) explained the role of red blood cell antigens in providing matched blood for SCD patients. 83% of evaluated websites included testimonials from patients, 42% included interviews from medical professionals, and 58% included a specific “call to action”, inviting African-Americans to donate blood for patients with SCD. Overall, large-scale blood systems were most likely to have the identified themes present on their websites (81.3%), while hospital-based blood centers were least likely (43.8%).

Conclusions: Most blood center websites specified the need for matched blood donors for SCD patients and utilized images of African-Americans. Few websites explained the role of RBC antigens in identifying matched donors. Several websites lacked a specific call to action for African-Americans to donate blood. Few blood centers addressed the difference between sickle cell disease and trait, and very few informed sickle cell trait patients of their eligibility to donate blood. Further study is required to evaluate the impact of the identified themes found in blood center websites on African-Americans persons in the lay community.

Importance of research: U.S. blood centers use marketing strategies and media to inform and recruit ethnically diverse donors as a solution to this country’s blood supply shortage. Web media is commonly the first point of contact for potential donors, therefore, it is crucial to know if the media conveys urgency and if it’s comprehensible and accessible.