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Report on Social and Behavioral Interventions
to Increase Organ Donation Grant Program 1999-2004
Worksite Campaigns
An alternate way of reaching the public with organ donation
promotion messages can be accomplished by bringing campaigns
to the workplace. Because workplaces are communities where
people spend much of their time they may prove to be potentially
productive contexts for public education, especially when
the stories of co-workers who have been affected by organ
donation are told through internal media, as is the case with
three of the campaigns discussed below.
An early worksite campaign project was conducted in Kentucky
with United Parcel Service11.
A campaign that included site visits and the use of internal
media to disseminate information about organ donation as well
as the personal stories of two UPS employees (a donor husband
and the father of a girl on the transplant waiting list).
External media in the form of billboards located on roads
leading in and out of the UPS worksite were also used to disseminate
general information about organ donation. A 10% stratified
random sample responded to pre/post-test surveys. Compared
to another branch of UPS that served as a control site, the
intervention site showed statistically significant increases
in the willingness to become a donor, to talk with family
members about organ donation as well as the intent to talk
with family about donation in the future, knowledge about
organ donation, and attitudes toward donation.
Because this worksite campaign used only one company and
could not pinpoint the campaign elements that contributed
to campaign success, a subsequent campaign12
using six matched worksites was planned, using universities
as the sites of two types of campaigns (contrasted against
control sites). The project, called the University Worksite
Organ Donation Project (conducted in AZ, AL, NC, NJ, PA, and
TX) heavily utilized internal media including campus papers
and newsletters in addition to more traditional outlets such
as billboards and radio. In one of the quasi-experimental
conditions, only media messages (including those that featured
the stories of members of the university community) were used
to promote organ donation. In another condition, the media
campaign was supported by on-site visits by OPO staff and
volunteers. A random stratified pre/post-test mail survey
demonstrated that compared to the control condition, there
was a statistically significant advantage to adding on-site
visits on whether respondents reported signing a donor card
or talked to family about organ donation. However, the media-only
campaign did not produce results that were statistically different
from the control condition. The project organizers argue that
the outreach component offers community members the opportunity
to “put a human face” on the issue of organ donation because
many volunteers are transplant recipients or donor family
members. Additionally, the site visits provide an opportunity
to ask questions about organ donation that may linger even
after seeing ads or billboards promoting organ donation.
In Chicago13,
a worksite campaign was developed that involved 12 companies,
each with three separate branch locations which were randomized
to the three quasi-experimental conditions: control (general
health presentation, with organ donation information imbedded),
basic (a concerted educational effort that included testimonials
from transplant recipients), and enhanced (where additional
information was provided to help employees persuade family
members to also become donors). The interventions were delivered
via “lunch and learn” sessions. Based on a pre-test survey
and one month follow-up post-test survey, the project demonstrated
success in producing greater willingness to donate and greater
perceptions of the benefits of donation relative to the control
groups. The intervention groups as well as the control groups
showed statistically significant increases in the willingness
to talk with family members. However, it should be noted that
only between 5 and 45 people attended these sessions, with
an average attendance of 22 people. Although access to corporations
to conduct lunch-and-learn sessions is generally easy to negotiate,
the limited number of people within large corporations who
receive the message compromises the total potential impact
of this type of worksite intervention. The extra time and
effort to secure company-wide access for a comprehensive worksite
campaign is likely to reap far greater rewards because public
education necessarily operates on an economy of scale.
A larger-scale series of worksite campaigns was developed
in New Jersey14.
This ongoing project has completed campaigns with 18 companies,
but will eventually reach employees in a total of 45 companies.
Companies are divided into three quasi-experimental conditions
that mirror those of the University Worksite Organ Donation
Project (mass media campaigns contrasted against campaigns
that also include on-site visits by staff and volunteers).
In addition to expanding the number and diversity in the type
of companies reached, campaigns last only 10 weeks. Preliminary
results from pre/post-test telephone or paper surveys of a
random sample of employees indicate that campaigns that include
on-site visits are more successful than those that use only
internal media to disseminate information about organ donation.
Further, campaigns that publicize the stories of co-workers
who have been touched by organ donation are more effective
than campaigns that use only general stories about local people
who have been personally affected by organ donation. These
findings generally mirror the results of both the United Parcel
Service Project and the University Worksite Organ Donation
Project. Project researchers intend to conduct an in-depth
analysis of the structural features of organizations that
contribute to the success (or failure) of worksite campaigns,
which should help other OPOs make decisions about where best
to devote limited public education and outreach resources.
Worksite campaigns show considerable promise for replication.
A blueprint for successful campaigns is slowly emerging, which
includes particular elements, multiple on-site visits to encourage
employees to become declared donors, and publicizing the personal
stories of employees from each organization. Gaining (and
maintaining) access to large organizations for worksite campaigns
appears to be the principal challenge facing these campaigns,
which nevertheless hold the promise of reaching many thousands
of people with organ donation information as well as easy
opportunities to become potential organ donors.
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