Case Study: Using Social Media to Promote Organ and Tissue Donation

Posted on July 31st, 2010 by Admin

Motivated by gratitude for the gift of life they have received, and by a desire to help others, patients who have had a transplant are among the most eager to share their stories and to demonstrate the importance of organ donation.

In addition to just celebrating life, that's a major reason behind the National Kidney Foundation's Transplant Games which are held every two years. This year the games are being held in Madison, Wisc., and during the registration period over the last two days, prior to tonight's opening ceremonies, Mayo Clinic has had a booth offering anyone involved with transplantation an opportunity to share their stories. Here are a few:

Joe Stott, a heart transplant recipient from Georgia, told of meeting the family of his donor, Brian, and the special bond they now have:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY81FYCk5_o]

Randel Anderson, from Northeast Nebraska, related how a liver from a deceased 77-year old donor, has enabled him to participate in four of the biannual games:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wra4XaQF1jc]

And Brenda and Evan Donahue told about their experience as she gave him one of her kidneys:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpqHgJNIccc]

This is the second time Mayo Clinic has used social media in conjunction with the Transplant Games. Two years ago in Pittsburgh we also captured several testimonials, which you can see in this playlist. One lesson we learned two years ago was that the registration area is quite noisy, so this time we brought a video camera that had an audio input jack that enabled us to use a remote microphone. This post describes our efforts in 2008. And here's a post I wrote on my personal blog at that time, Seven Steps to Promoting Transplant through Social Media.

This year, in addition to better audio for the videos, we have a new Facebook group called Transplantation at Mayo Clinic. Several participants have already shared their stories on its wall.

There also is a Facebook group for the Transplant Games as a whole, as well as a YouTube channel and Twitter account for the Kidney Foundation (though the Twitter account isn't too active).

The Transplant Games go through August 4. You can follow the #transplantgames hashtag on Twitter, and help to share these stories by passing them along to your friends and followers.

Tags: Mayo Clinic, Organ Donation, social media, Transplant