Public Education Efforts to Increase Organ Donation

Project Summaries: Public Education Efforts to Increase Solid Organ Donation

Fiscal Year 2011 Grantees

This project will disseminate Explore Transplant to ESRD Networks 9, 10, 15 and 17.  These networks oversee 1,223 dialysis centers in 15 states and territories serving over 25,000 transplant-eligible patients.  Dialysis providers will participate in in-person Explore Transplant trainings or online e-learning modules and receive access to updated Explore Transplant materials in English and Spanish for patient dissemination.

This project will implement a targeted motor vehicle registry campaign to increase donor registry enrollment in Massachusetts.  Public education will include clerk training, organ donation displays and repeated exposure to organ donation PSAs in waiting areas.  A second campaign, “Click for Life,” will run a PSA on the RMV website targeting those who are conducting online RMV transactions to register online.  The two outreach efforts will be evaluated at the census tract level to determine effectiveness.

This intervention builds on previous DMV-based interventions and relies on point-of-decision (POD) materials and educational training for Motor Vehicle Representative (MVRs) to increase actionable donor designation. POD materials will include footprint stickers, posters, and clerk cards that include promotional information about donation and instructions on the registry process.  Training protocols will educate MVRs about the donation process and provide scripts for responding to anticipated customer queries about the transplantation process.

The proposed project will develop and test a new approach that allows people to register using text messaging, and then use it in a series of collegiate athletic events during the grant period to test and refine the system.  Based on the success of the project, the text messaging call to action will then be incorporated into all marketing materials distributed by the Center for Organ Recovery and Education (CORE) and Donate Life American in CORE’s Donor Service Area.

Fiscal Year 2010 Grantees

This project seeks to identify the most effective message appeal to encourage 18-year-old African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic adults to join the First-Person Consent (FPC) Donor Registry in Illinois. The project team will conduct a stratified (by race) random digit dial phone survey (N=600) to determine current factors related to joining the FPC donor registry which will inform the development of a mailer to each of the three populations. The team will evaluate a 6-month intervention by employing an experimental 3 x 3 posttest-only design.

This project will test the efficacy of a public education campaign using computer games to communicate the need for organ donors and increase donor designations on state registries. This approach is intended not only to reach large numbers of people in a cost- effective way, but also to overcome the gap inherent in traditional public education between the time people receive a message about donation and when they are in a position to take action. By placing a link to the online registry within the game itself, people will be able to designate themselves as donor without significant additional effort.

This project will promote broader implementation and evaluation of the Explore Transplant education program within dialysis centers serving 20,000 transplant-eligible patients in 14 states. The project will evaluate improvements in dialysis providers' ability and motivation to educate about transplant, their implementation of Explore Transplant with patients, and patients' level of improved living donation knowledge. The project will assess whether dialysis patients presenting for transplant evaluation who received Explore Transplant had more living donation knowledge than those who did not receive Explore Transplant.

Fiscal Year 2009 Grantees

Using multimedia communications, including social media, personalized messages, email marketing, newsletters, and campus newspapers, this project focuses on the development of a replicable model for increasing donor registry enrollment by university students, their families and their friends. A multimedia and social networking communication campaign will be developed and implemented. Four multi-media conditions will be investigated. Overall project goals include: (a) 60–85% donor registration enrollment by AMA student organization members, and (b) a 9–10% increase in donor registry enrollments for each year.

The already successful Campus Challenge program run by Gift of Life Michigan and Lifeline of Ohio will be improved by the use of Facebook to present already established "Donate Life" ads which are enhanced with school logos in order to highlight the social identity of the campus affiliation via a competition with other schools. Facebook applications that students can use to educate and persuade their friends and family members to join the web registry will be added, thus utilizing the power of social network influence. The overall registrations from the State of Michigan and the State of Ohio will be tracked. These efforts should yield higher rates of public commitment to become an organ donor, ultimately leading to an improvement in the quality of life for many citizens.

Consent and conversion rates among downstate residents of New York are among the lowest in the United States. The current project will use peer-to-peer campaigns to increase state registry enrollment by 20% on 5 campuses in Year 1 and 7 campuses in Year 2. The project will capitalize on the gains shown in the existing project and improve outreach by: (1) conducting year-long campaigns, (2) using grassroots methods to recruit student-advocates, and (3) relying on the face-to-face, or interpersonal medium, to promote donation among minority students. It is anticipated that the proposed grant activities will prove a cost-effective, replicable, and sustainable intervention for organ procurement organizations to adopt.

This project will use a provider-based comprehensive media and outreach education program that centers on individually-tailored messages delivered by local health care providers with the goal of increasing donor designation. The project will employ an integrated media-based and grassroots outreach effort in the community of Rapid City, South Dakota. The media messages will feature health care providers supported by intensive grassroots outreach consisting of driver's license bureau outreach, workplace partnership for life programs, and community events. The purpose of the project is to bring proven media and community outreach approaches to a geographically isolated city and rural area with the involvement of trusted hospital staff as messengers to increase donor designation. The research evaluation will include surveys pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys within a comparison design.

The project will perform a replication of the recently completed West Virginia Organ Donor Project. The current proposal looks to test the portability of the campaign's design by performing a replication at an educational institution that is designated as a HBCU (Historically Black College and University). The effectiveness of the campaign will be based on observed differences in registry sign-ups when comparing the control group to the experimental group.

Fiscal Year 2008 Grantees

The purpose of this project is to increase donor registry enrollment among Spanish-Language Dominant Hispanics (SLDH) in greater Los Angeles by replicating a media/grassroots campaign found to be successful in three other Southwest SLDH communities. The project will implement intense grassroots efforts in three pre-selected Hispanic communities within greater Los Angeles. The project will include a 15-month media campaign using television and radio advertisements and an 18-month grassroots effort. The grassroots effort will include community presentations at churches and other locations where the target population can be reached. Donor registry enrollment among Hispanics will serve as the key outcome variable.

The project seeks to increase the number and proportion of New Yorkers who enroll in the state registry with an emphasis on young adults age 18–24 years. An Internet-based viral marketing campaign will be implemented to increase knowledge of organ donation and to encourage New York residents to sign up as organ donors. Results will be evaluated by the number of hits to and sign ups on the sites, the overall increase (by number and percentage) in the State registry and the increase in 18–24 year-olds on the registry.

Fiscal Year 2007 Grantees

This project is an evidence- and faith-based program that builds on two previous health-related projects. The organ and tissue donation module will be implemented as part of the entire program in 20 African American churches and include 60 participants per church. The primary outcome will be measured at an 18 month follow-up by the number of actual registrations on the Michigan Organ Donor Registry.

This college-based program builds on a previous grant which enrolled nearly 4,000 college students, and seeks to increase organ donor registry enrollments, signing rates, and family notification by 20 percent in this population and among local community members. It should be noted that organ donation registrations in the New York State Organ Registry in the affected zip codes are projected to increase by only five percent. The project could improve this projection by an additional 15 percent.

Two targeted, multifaceted educational campaigns will be conducted at 30 Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) offices. The educational campaigns are expected to increase donor registry enrollment rates of Hispanic American drivers by 50 percent in these offices when compared to DHSMV Offices without such training.

Trained volunteers will be used to increase donation enrollments at DMV sites, public outreach activities, and at special events such as Donor Sabbath and Donate Life month activities. Targeted audiences include African Americans and those needing to update their organ donor registry enrollment information. Legislation enacted in January 2007 makes Michigan a first person consent State where the consent to donate organs and tissues is legally binding and can not be denied by family members.