Be The Match donor registration event set for Saturday, Dec. 10 at Selah High School holiday bazaar.
SELAH, Wash. — Every three minutes, someone is diagnosed with blood cancer and every 10 minutes, one of those people die. Unlike many other cancers, there is a cure, but it only works if patients can find the right donor.
That’s why 16-year-old Selah High School junior Taylor Aadland is spearheading a Be The Match campaign to add more potential donors to the worldwide donor registry, setting up a booth at the school’s holiday bazaar on Saturday.
“A lot of people do not have a donor in their family, so it’s really important,” Aadland said. “It’s important to me because of how much is not known and how much help there isn’t out there for people in need.”
Aadland said increasing the overall number of people in the registry is critical to saving lives. But there’s also a dire need for a more diverse pool of donors because people are more likely to match with someone with a similar ethnic background.
Research shows people of color don’t have as good of a chance at matching with someone in the registry. While the donor rate is 79% for white patients, it’s significantly lower for people of color, coming in at:
- 60% for Native American patients
- 48% for Hispanic or Latino patients
- 47% for Asian or Pacific Islander patients
- 29% for Black or African American patients.
“If you fall into a category of ethnicity that has a low donor rate, you’re going to have a very low chance of finding someone who can donate to you,” Aadland said.
For some patients, that might mean waiting months or years for a stranger to go through the 1o-minute process of filling out a registration form, swabbing their cheek for DNA and becoming a match.
Courtney Peart, who teaches health science and sports medicine and serves as the athletic trainer at Selah High School, said for others that help may come too late or not at all.
“It depends, but likely they do not survive, depending on the type of blood cancer disease they have,” Peart said. “I think people don’t realize that they can simply save somebody with a very simple blood draw procedure.”
To register, you have to be 18 to 40, meet some basic health requirements, fill out an online form, swab your cheek for DNA and mail it to Be The Match. If you match with someone, you’ll be contacted.
“15% of the time you’re doing liquid bone marrow which is a surgical procedure,” Aadland said. “But the other 85% of the time, you’re doing peripheral stem cells, which are circulating cells in the blood. It’s incredibly similar to donating blood.”
Even if you match, you don’t have to go through with any procedures. Aadland said if you decide to become a donor, you won’t have to pay for anything and could end up saving a life.
“It’s free, you’re under no obligation to donate if you are a match and why wouldn’t you help someone if you could?” Aadland said.
For Selah High School health science teacher Heather Gamache, this is an issue that hits close to home.
“My mom has a blood cancer,” Gamache said. “I didn’t know if I needed to be her match.”
Gamache said her mother has been doing well with some of the new treatments offered to her and will likely not need a bone marrow or stem cell transplant.
But it’s a different story for her aunt, who was also diagnosed with a fast-acting blood cancer that normally leaves patients with less than a year left to live.
“She did match for a bone marrow transplant and that was critical to helping her at that moment,” Gamache said. “Some of these patients though, they only have a couple months, so matching is critical, fast. And I think expanding the registry gets them to that answer.”
Their goal is to get 50 people added to the donor registry by the end of the year. Thanks to a presentation Aadland gave to staff at the high school earlier this month, they already have 20 people signed up.
“Those 20 people could save more than 20 lives,” Gamache said. “I think when [Taylor] steps back as an adult, she’ll realize that, too, later in life, like ‘I made a big footprint’ and that’s awesome.”
Aadland and other members of the school’s HOSA-Future Health Professionals will be at the annual holiday bazaar at Selah High School from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. to answer questions, help people get registered or accept donations for Be The Match.
“Funds raised really helped just further stem cell research, cover the uninsured cost of transplants for patients, but also helps add people to the registry,” Aadland.
Aadland said after high school, she plans to pursue a career in nursing, athletic training or psychology — all professions aimed at making sure people are healthy, well and taken care of. She said helping other people is important to her.
“Whether that’s mentally or physically, it’s incredibly important, because our society needs those people,” Aadland said. “Without them, our world would kind of fall apart.”
Aadland is set to give a district-wide presentation about the Be The Match campaign next month. She plans to continue with the campaign through at least the end of the year.
Anyone interested in learning more about the local Be The Match campaign or potentially scheduling Aadland to give a presentation on the donor registry can contact Courtney Peart at [email protected] or Heather Gamache at [email protected].
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