Brown is currently leading the pack of Rhode Island colleges that donate blood to the Rhode Island Blood Center. Members of the Brown community give the most pints to the center, coming in ahead of Providence College and Bryant College, according to Peter Hanney, account manager for the RIBC.
The blood drives occur about twice every semester, and a variety of sponsors and on-campus offices work to coordinate them. One blood drive occurred in September, and another is scheduled for December. The September blood drive, organized by Alpha Epsilon Pi and Kappa Alpha Theta, collected 353 pints of blood, an increase from last year's drive held around the same time. Though 439 people showed up, Hanney said 86 potential donors were turned away from the drive, in many cases because they had recently traveled abroad.
Hanney said persistent advertising can be effective in increasing donor turnout.
"The number one reason people don't donate is they're not asked," Hanney said.
For the most recent drive, organizers used popular student Web sites such as the Daily Jolt and Facebook to help promote the event. Hanney said he hopes advertising will help yield even more donations in December.
Blood drives are conducted by the RIBC, which has been operating since 1979 after hospitals in Rhode Island decided to channel all blood donations in the state through one center, according to Hanney. The RIBC is located in Providence and 16 percent of its blood donations come from colleges and high schools.
In addition to fraternities and sororities, assistance with on-campus blood drives also comes from Health Services and Emergency Medical Services.
Bone marrow registration at Brown
Along with blood drives, the RIBC started a program to encourage bone marrow donations in 1991. The most recent on-campus bone marrow registration drive, which was held Oct. 24, recruited 157 new potential donors.
The drive was organized by a group of medical students who were approached in April by Ed Feller, co-director of the Community Health Clerkship for the Medical School.
During a bone marrow registration drive, a worker uses a swab to take a sample from a potential donor's cheek, and that donor is put on a registry designed to match donors with those in need of bone marrow. If a potential bone marrow recipient is identified as a match, then the donor is contacted and can decide whether to continue with the donation process.
There are currently 36,000 donors on the Rhode Island registry, according to Doreen Travers, coordinator of the bone marrow program at the Rhode Island Blood Center. Universities have long been important sources of bone marrow donors because their student populations have more ethnic variation, and students are typically eager to help the cause, Travers said. "They're just an easier target," she added.
Sybil Dessie M.D. '08 and Ben Mathis M.D. '08, who were the main organizers of the drive, said Feller sees a need for increasing the number of minority donors, particularly because matching bone marrow for any given patient is typically easier when working with a sample of potential donors of the same ethnicity.
In order to encourage minority students to register to donate bone marrow, Dessie and Mathis attended various events that tend to attract many minorities, including the convocation of Multiracial Heritage Week and meetings of the South Asian Students' Association. Dessie and Mathis are both members of the Student National Medical Association, an association "focused on the needs and concerns of medical students of color," according to its Web site.
The Oct. 24 event marked the first time an on-campus bone marrow drive had been held separately from a blood drive, and it was also the first time Dessie and Mathis had worked to coordinate such an effort.
"I was just afraid no one would come," Mathis said.
Dessie and Mathis said they are eager to dispel myths relating to the donation of marrow, which can sometimes scare potential donors away.
"There's a lot of misinformation about the topic," Dessie said.
