Twitter & TikTok: AABB Virtual Journal Club Assesses Use of Multimedia Resources for Donor Recruitment

This article has been written by Warren Fingrut, MD, Adult Bone Marrow Transplantation Fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, USA and Founder and Director of Stem Cell Club (stemcellclub.ca), a donor recruitment organization in Canada, and Marion Brunck, PhD, research professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico.

Recruiting committed hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) donors remains a challenge for organizations worldwide. Ethnic diversity within HSC banks is desired to enable HLA matching for patients from racial minority groups awaiting HSC transplantation. Young male donors are also preferred due to improved outcomes in transplant recipients. How can recruitment be optimized to 1) target these demographics in particular, and 2) increase overall?

The latest AABB Virtual Journal Club (#AABBjc) on Twitter examined results of a recent study published in Transfusion addressing the utilization of multimedia resources to recruit hematopoietic stem cell donors. In this qualitative study, researchers used an educational whiteboard video about stem cell donation to generate clues on how to effectively develop and employ multimedia resources to optimize donor recruitment.

The journal club was moderated by Marion Brunck, PhD, research professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico; and Warren Fingrut, MD, fellow on the Adult Bone Marrow Transplantation Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Fingrut is also the founder and director of Stem Cell Club (stemcellclub.ca), a donor recruitment organization in Canada, and is the lead author of the paper being discussed.

The following four questions were addressed in two live Twitter chats and over 24 hours to accommodate an asynchronous discussion period for those who could not be available for a live session: 

1. What multimedia resources do you use to recruit HSC donors?
2. How have you adapted to recruiting HSC donors during the Covid-19 pandemic?
3. How do you communicate the importance of having an ethnically diverse group of HSC donors?
4. What resources would your facility need to make (more) multimedia recruitment tools available? 

The discussion kicked off with the moderators sharing the whiteboard video studied in the paper, a “crisp” introduction to stem cell donation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4fVBtxnWfM&ab_channel=StemCellClub

Fingrut outlined a number of other multimedia resources currently being used to support virtual stem cell donor recruitment, including infographics, Why We Swab, a library of stories in stem cell donation (@WhyWeSwab on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter), and TikTok videos. One story post which was felt to be particularly engaging to young donors from diverse ancestries was Ali’s story, about a donor recruiter of mixed-race ancestry who first signed up to donate stem cells as something “for his resume,” and who was later diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He responded well to chemotherapy alone but also understood firsthand how it can feel for patients of mixed-race ancestry to search for matched unrelated donors, and today he continues to advocate for stem cell donation “to get the whole world signed up.”

AABBjc participants were impressed with the TikTok videos shared to support donor recruitment efforts in Canada (examples here, here, and here), with many commenting that this journal club had motivated them to download the app and start making their own! Various participants suggested this method of communication could also be used to promote blood and organ donations and inform the public on the process. A perspective was shared that training resources are needed to support transfusion medicine professionals to make TikToks to support recruitment efforts. Participants exchanged ideas on how to evaluate these and other recruitment multimedia for their impact on donor recruitment, favoring a mixed-methods approach including quantitative (how many social media engagements, how many donors signed up) and qualitative analyses (what did donors from needed demographic groups think?). 

Another successful journal club, “perfused” with fun, youth and a collaborative spirit characteristic of the AABB events! Don’t hesitate to follow @WhyWeSwab on Twitter and @StemCellClub on TikTok, both of which publish new donor recruitment multimedia each week!