Title
Measuring the Effectiveness of a Multimedia Internet-Based Approach to Increasing Donor Registry Participation

Grant program
FY1999 Extramural Support Program "Model Interventions to Increase Organ and Tissue Donation"

Granting agency
Division of Transplantation, Office of Special Programs, Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Public Health Service

Submitted by
Transplantation Society of Michigan
University of Michigan
    TransWeb: All About Transplantation and Donation
    Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research
TransCom Media
July 1999

Public access to life-saving organ transplants is principally limited by the mismatch between need for and availability of donor organs. Studies show that the overwhelming majority of Americans would donate their loved one's organs and tissues if they were certain that the deceased wished to donate. Thus, education, decision-making, and family notification of that decision are important to improving donation consent rates. Key targets for this process are secondary school students (who are in the process of forming beliefs) and health care providers working in settings where donations may occur. The Internet is potentially an ideal resource to facilitate all three factors: education, decision-making, and family notification. TransWeb (www.transweb.org) provides a wealth of transplantation- and donation-related information to an audience of hundreds of thousands of people each month; The Transplant Journey, a component of TransWeb, is a multimedia trip through the transplant process, from learning about what organs do, to taking care of yourself after transplantation. We intend to create a new path through The Journey portraying a donor family's point of view. This educational component will be created with the combined expertise of educators, web designers, and transplant content specialists and will be enriched with video produced by TransCom Media. The decision-making component of the project is based on the Gift of Life donor registry (of the Transplantation Society of Michigan). After completing this virtual Journey, participants will be offered the opportunity to join the registry. Participants will also be encouraged to notify their family members of their decision, and a specially-designed electronic greeting card that can be emailed or printed will be provided for this purpose. Assessment of the effectiveness of the project will take into account the number of additional registrations in the donor registry, and the number of participants notifying their family members of their decision to do so. To measure the effect of the Journey on knowledge about and attitudes towards transplantation and donation, researchers from the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research will provide pre- and post-tests. To learn about possible racial and/or ethnic variations, demographic information will also be collected and analyzed. This is a three-year project, with planning, design, and content creation in the first year, launching, marketing and initiation of data collection in the second year, and continued data collection and data analysis in the third year.