Kidney Donation in Blacks

243 Brief communication KIDNEY DONATION IN BLACKS To the editor: I was pleased to read the paper by Kankam et al. on cadaveric kidney donation in urban blacks [Vol. 1, No. 2: 229-236]. The authors' analysis of their survey was well thought-out, and the discussion, recommendations , and conclusions were timely and appropriate. One problem with the survey is that it appears to have been administered in the summer of 1981—10 years ago—and it may no longer reflect current awareness among blacks of organ /tissue donation. But the authors' conclusions were very similar to a hypothesis we at the Howard University Transplant Center used as the basis for our District of Columbia Black Organ Donor Project (DCODP) in 1982. The hypothesis was that when the black community is approached by other blacks, people will recognize the uniqueness of our affliction with hypertension and kidney disease, and will help remedy this problem. Like the authors, we agreed on the need to develop an intensive public education program, and we began to devise community education strategies, including alterations in school curricula, to carry this message to black children and young adults. Thus was bom the DCODP, a project based on face-to-face dialogue with community residents.1 As a result, the annual number of black organ donors in the District doubled from 12 to 272, the number of District residents signing organ donor cards at the Motor Vehicle Bureau rose from 25 per month in 1982 to 750 per month in 1989, and the concepts of kidney transplantation, kidney failure, and hypertension were introduced into the secondary school curriculum .1 The success of this organ donor program between 1982 and 1986 led to the establishment of the Dow Chemical Company's Take Initiative Program (DOW TIP), a black donor education program that between 1986 and 1990 was taken to the 26 U.S. cities with the highest black populations. The success of DOW TIP led in turn to the National Pilot Black Donor Education Project, which was sponsored in 1990 by Dow and the NAACP (DOW-NAACP). DOW ΉΡ and DOW-NAACP alone reached in excess of an estimated 30 million persons. The end results of these grassroots efforts were reflected25 in changes measured by Gallup Polls taken between 1985 and 1990. Over this fiveyear period, the number of surveyed blacks who had signed organ donor cards increased from seven percent to 24 percent, and the number aware of the highly Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1991 244________________________________________________________________ successful nature of transplantation increased from 10 percent to 32 percent. Based on the success of efforts to date, we have called for the establishment of a National Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program. —Clive O. Callender, M.D., F.A.C.S. Professor and Vice Chairman Department of Surgery Director, Transplant Center Howard University Hospital 2041 Georgia Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20060 REFERENCES 1. Callender CO. The results of transplantation in blacks: Just the tip of the iceberg. Transpl Proc 1989Jun;21(3):3407-10. 2. Callender CO, Hall LE, Yeager CL, et al. Organ donation and blacks: A critical frontier. N Eng J Med 1991 Aug 8;325(6):442-4. 3. Callender CO, Hall LE, Yeager CL, et al. The anatomy of a community-based transplant education program for blacks. (In press.) 4. Callender CO. Organ and tissue donation in African-Americans: A national strategem. Proceedings of the Surgeon General's Workshop on Increasing Organ Donation. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, June 1991. 5. Hall LE, Callender CO, Yeager CL, et al. Organ donation in blacks: The next frontier. Transpl Proc (In press.) ...