Recruiting blood donors into a local bone marrow donor registry.

To date, most persons joining bone marrow donor registries have been recruited from platelet-pheresis panels. The potential of recruiting regular blood donors into bone marrow donor registry (BMDR) was explored. It was found that, with minimal effort, 6.2 percent of the age-eligible blood donors were recruited. A distinguishing feature of those who joined the BMDR was a history of frequent blood donations. Although local media attention had a major impact on recruitment, even those joining as a result of the publicity usually were regular blood donors. This program has the potential to recruit nearly 8000 volunteers from 120,000 regular blood donors over an 18-month period.