Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D.
Her nanoparticle research has many applications
|
Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D. Her nanoparticle research has many applications |
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
An
unstoppable drive African-American blood-donation program funded by grant By Kimberly Leydig Michael DeBaun, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics in the School of Medicine, has long been devoted to decreasing the health-care disparity in underserved populations.
Medical school researchers recently received a five-year, $987,440 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to expand the Charles Drew Community Blood Donor Program to all three children's hospitals in Missouri. DeBaun is the principal investigator of the grant, which is a joint effort with Saint Louis University/Cardinal Glennon Hospital and the University of Missouri-Kansas City/Mercy Children's Hospital. The impact of the initial Charles Drew campaign in St. Louis has been stunning. In the early 1990s, African-Americans donated only 1,200 units of blood annually. Now -- thanks solely to the Charles Drew Community Blood Donor Program -- approximately 9,000 units of blood from African-Americans are collected annually. The NIH grant will allow University researchers to expand the successful local blood-donor program statewide. "We predict that the number of African-American blood donors in Missouri will increase by 300 percent over the next three years," DeBaun said. Sickle cell disease, an inherited disorder of the red blood cells, is the most common genetic disorder in African-Americans. The disease affects about one in 300 African-American infants. In children with sickle cell disease, stroke is the most feared complication. About one- third of these children will develop either an overt stroke or silent stroke before completing high school. Children with strokes require frequent blood transfusions -- sometimes 15-25 per year -- to prevent additional strokes. The ability to provide ongoing blood-transfusion therapy is vitally important for children with strokes and sickle cell disease. Because of the frequent requirement for blood transfusions and the increased incidence of African-Americans developing proteins that will reject blood, DeBaun sought out ways to increase the number of African-American blood donors. "Children with sickle cell disease who are predominantly African-American often have subtle differences in red blood cell proteins that make it more likely that the best-matched donor will come from someone with a similar ethnic background," DeBaun said. The grant also highlights the potential benefits of cord-blood (or stem-cell) donations for children and adults with sickle cell disease. DeBaun says traditional health-care barriers and misperceptions in educating African-American women about the importance of cord-blood donations has prevented this group from being informed about the importance of donating cord blood. The St. Louis Cord Blood Bank at Saint Louis University/ Cardinal Glennon Hospital collects, processes and stores donated cord blood for the purpose of stem-cell transplant for children with life-threatening diseases. Stem-cell transplant is an alternative to bone-marrow transplant and offers a chance of a cure for many children with cancer. It also carries a promise of a cure for children with sickle cell disease. In 2000, only 34 African-American cord-blood donations were collected from 6,800 births in St. Louis. African-Americans comprise approximately 12 percent of those births, but only 2 percent of the total cord blood banked to date is from minorities. DeBaun believes the lack of formal education programs for the African-American community and paucity of partnerships within the community has resulted in embarrassing low cord-blood donations from African-Americans. Last spring, DeBaun's team conducted a survey that polled nearly 150 African-American women in north St. Louis. DeBaun reports that approxi-mately 90 percent of the polled women said that they would definitely or probably donate their cord blood if they were aware that it could help save a life of a child. Through the grant's community awareness program and educational efforts, DeBaun predicts that at least 10 percent of African-American births in the St. Louis region will result in cord-blood donations in the future. The grant also will allow DeBaun's team to expand programs such as Sickle Cell Sabbath, a faith-based outreach program that encourages African-American churches to educate and increase awareness about sickle cell disease. "We believe our strategies used for expanding both blood and cord-blood donations in the African-American community will improve the quality of life for children and adults with sickle cell disease, not only at St. Louis Children's Hospital but for all affected individuals with sickle cell disease in Missouri," DeBaun said. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
