OA4-AM24-ST-26 - Evolving Blood Donor Demographics in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Saturday, October 19, 2024

1:45 PM - 2:45 PM

Location: 342

CE: Zero

Presenting Author(s)

W. Alton Russell, PhD (he/him/his)

Assistant Professor
McGill School of Population and Global Health
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Disclosure information not submitted.

Background/Case Studies: Lockdowns, school and work closures, and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted blood collection. The impact on the sociodemographic composition of the blood donor base remains largely unexplored

Study

Design/Methods: We analyzed all successful allogeneic donations collected by Vitalant from 2019 to 2022. We stratified the donations by age group, sex, race/ethnicity (white, black, other), and donation environment (mobile drive and fixed site) and developed heatmaps to visualize the monthly number of collections and change in the number of collections from the corresponding month in 2019 across subgroups.

Results/Findings: Collections at mobile drives fell dramatically in March 2020 and did not recover to 2019 levels in 2021 or 2022 except among women age 55+ (Figure A). Donors aged 55 and above exhibited the greatest consistency throughout the pandemic and increased donations at fixed sites, particularly among women. Collections were substantially reduced from young donors of all races and from black donors of all ages, but particularly from young black donors. While the pandemic saw a surge in adult female White donors, other racial groups did not witness commensurate increases

Conclusions:

The COVID-19 pandemic led to changes in the donor base from 2019 that have persisted at least three years, with fewer mobile collections, greater participation from female donors, and reduced participation from young and non-white donors. These changes have implications for hemoglobin deferrals and donation-associated iron anemia, which are more prevalent among women, and ability to find donors with rare blood types needed to treat chronically transfused patients with conditions like sickle cell disease (often patients of African descent) or thalassemia (often patients of South Asian descent). Tailored outreach strategies, focusing on retaining younger donors, particularly from underrepresented communities, and diversifying recruitment efforts, may help mitigate post-pandemic loss of key blood donor categories.