Steps to become a Bone Marrow Donor

Step 1: Register and wait to be contacted

Register to be a bone marrow donor online [9] or at a local in-person donor drive. After a simple cheek swab, your name will be placed on a registry and you’ll wait to be contacted in the event that you’re a match with a patient in need.

Step 2: Take a blood sample and undergo a physical

If and only if a match is found, you’ll be asked to go to a lab where a blood sample will be taken to confirm your tissue type. You’ll also undergo a physical exam to make sure you’re healthy.

Don’t worry, your appointment, lab work, and everything that follows, will all be arranged and paid for.

Step 3: Find out how you’ll be donating

A short time later, you’ll be asked to donate one of two things: either bone marrow, or PBSCs (Peripheral Blood Stem Cells). Each requires a different procedure.

Step 4: Donate PBSC or Marrow

PBSC Donation

Roughly 80-90% of matching donors are asked to donate PBSCs. In this case, you’ll be given protein for 4 or 5 days, which stimulates the stem cells in your marrow to circulate into your blood stream.

After you’ve received all the protein, you’ll go to a hospital where your blood will be drawn through one arm, pass through a machine to remove the useful cells, and returned to your body through your other arm. It takes just a few hours, and you can watch TV the whole time!

Marrow Donation

Roughly 10-20% of donors are asked to donate marrow. In this case, you’ll go to a hospital or donation center where doctors will withdraw liquid marrow from your back. You’ll go home the same day. Your back might ache a bit after, but you should feel fine in a few days.

It’s a common misconception that the marrow is taken from your spinal cord in an extremely painful procedure. It’s NOT. You’ll get anesthesia, and the marrow is taken from an area near your pelvic bone.

Step 5: Congratulate yourself

Congratulate yourself—you just helped save someone’s life! You really are a hero. How many people can say that?

Meet the Team

Student Leaders

Donovan Barfield '12 (Chemistry) is from Houston, TX. He joined the team after his mother faced breast cancer in the summer of 2010. Fortunately, his mother made it through the operation, yet the experience opened his eyes to the gravity of cancer and motivated him to serve other patients struggling with the disease.

Victor Em '13 (undeclared) is from San Diego, CA. He is currently working as a Business Development Intern and Content Manager for LikeALittle.com. He was inspired to join the team because of the story of Evan Chen, a brother of Lambda Phi Epsilon and Stanford student who passed away due to leukemia because he could not find a bone marrow match in time.

Bela Gupta MBA '11 is from India. Her current interests include disruptive technologies, e-commerce and healthy eating. This summer, Bela was a research assistant in the Marketing Department with a focus on “time, money, happiness,” through which she developed an interest in supporting the 100K campaign and assisting in the creation of India’s first bone marrow registry.

Nicole Heinl '13 (Biology) is from Barrington, RI. Her interests include global health and education, and is passionate about creating an international bone marrow registry. She hopes to accomplish that goal by working with the bone marrow registries in India this summer.

Sidd Jagadish '13 (Symbolic Systems) is from Ann Arbor, MI. He recently founded Cheese for Charity, which works to empower Himalayan women in India. He is passionate about creating an efficient bone marry registry in India.

Lily Kim '13 (undeclared) is from Seoul, South Korea. She has been involved in several sustainability issues at Stanford, helping organize the campus-wide Future Fest and Sustainable Fashion Show. She has also served as a Frosh Service Ambassador through the Haas Center.

Bo Ah Kwon '10 (Economics/Psychology) is from Seoul, South Korea. While working as a research assistant for Professor Jennifer Aaker, Bo Ah contributed to infusing psychological research into the book The Dragonfly Effect.

Sara Lannin '10 (American Studies; MA '11, Communication) is from Edina, MN. As part of her masters degree in the Communication department, she is working on a thesis about promoting causes through social networking channels such as Facebook and Twitter.

Alfredo Martinez Jr. '12 (History) is from San Diego, CA. His current interests include philanthropy and education. At Stanford, he is involved with Relay for Life, Stanford College Prep, Project WRITE, MEChA. He is also a candidate in the Public Service Leadership Program at the Haas Center.

Vineet Singal '12 (Biological Sciences) is from Texas. At Stanford, he is involved with Alternative Spring Break, the Stanford Neuroscience Society, Cardinal Free Clinics, and the Hindu Students' Association. In addition, he is the founder and executive director of Anjna Patient Education, which provides health education services to free clinics.

Advisors

• Jennifer Aaker [10]
• Tom Schnaubelt [11]

The College Challenge

The 2011 College Challenge is an intercollegiate movement to encourage students across the US to help register 100,000 people on the national bone marrow registry. Organized by 100k Cheeks, the challenge begins in March and goes until the end of May. Stanford's 100K Cheeks will provide materials for students to start a campus-based campaign of their own and to connect with local National Marrow Donor Program representatives.

We urge colleges to start with on-the-ground efforts such as holding a bone marrow drive on campus, while incorporating social media. The challenge will be a cooperative process but will also contain a competitive component so that we can encourage more students to join the registry. We hope that this Challenge will transform a Stanford-born project started by ten students into a sustainable, sweeping, national campaign.

For more information and inspiration, please watch our College Challenge video [12].

Who can get involved?

Any college students willing to take simple steps to save more lives can join the challenge.

Which schools are already participating?

Colleges like Tufts, Santa Clara, Harvard, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, University of Utah, and MIT are participating.

How can I sign up?

An email ([email protected] [13]) saying yes is all it takes to sign up!

What will happen after I email 100K Cheeks?

We will send you all the steps and materials you need to hold a drive of your own. These items include concise and easy directions on how to host a bone marrow drive on your campus, fliers, template letters for recruitment, and social media tips.

We will also connect you with the Be The Match (National Marrow Donor Program) representative for you region. This person can help you with everything related to holding a drive, including planning, fundraising, and logistics.

Then, you can actually hold a drive on your campus and tell us the number of donors you were able to register!

How do you count the numbers of donors during the competition?

Your Be The Match representative will help you keep track of the number of donors at your drives.

Please email [email protected] [13] with any additional questions.

Partners

OpenIDEO Collaboration

With the help of a Social Innovation Generation grant [14] from California Campus Compact and the generosity of individual donors, 100K Cheeks is partering with OpenIDEO [3], an online platform that aims to utilize the ingenuity of IDEO design thinking and community action to solve a social challenge. When a challenge is posted at OpenIDEO.com, the three development phases—inspiration, concepting, and evaluation—are put into motion. Between each development phase, IDEO helps shape the journey through framing the challenge, prototyping, and encouraging the conversation.

OpenIDEO will be working directly with the team to design the challenge in such a way as to help engage the community in addressing marrow donor diversification.

Community Partnerships

Once the OpenIDEOchallenge is completed, 100K Cheeks will collaborate with numerous key stakeholders, including local high schools, colleges/universities, Stanford’s vast network of student groups, and local companies. Our strategy is to rely on powerful storytelling to engage others’ emotions and fuel infectious actions, while tapping into the existing resources for marrow donation, such as the kits provided by Be the Match [15].  

Our community partners include:

• Anjna Patient Education
• Cure Rayan
• Cure Sonia
• The INK Conference [16]
• Seedwell Video Production and Digital Media [17]
• Save Samir
• Save Sanjana
• TEDxTampaBay [18]

Our Stanford partners include:

• Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) [19]
• Center for Social Innovation at the Graduate School of Business [20]
• Stanford Alumni Association [21]
• Stanford Blood Center [22]
• Stanford d.school [23]
• Stanford Relay for Life [24]
• Yes+ at Stanford [25]

Corporate Partners

Thank you to the following companies who have run bone marrow drives associated with 100K Cheeks talks and events:

• Accenture [26]
• Adobe [27]
• Bain & Company [28]
• Cisco Systems [29]

Collective Benefit

Due to shortages in volunteers caused by the economic downturn for charitable organizations such as Be the Match, venues for fresh volunteers are in high demand. Unfortunately, this decline in volunteers is a reflection of the general decline in resources felt by nonprofit organizations in the wake of the nation’s economic downturn.

As a result, by hosting drives and providing the volunteers, we will be able to offer a cost-effective means to advance the collective goal of our community partners to help save lives. Additionally, for colleges and high schools, the service projects provide students a chance to engage serious real-world issues and develop leadership skills that will be valuable in any number of future careers.

We gratefully acknowledge California Campus Compact and the Corporation for National and Community Service, Learn and Serve American, for their significant support in making this program possible.

News Center

May 2011

Stanford's successful STAN serves as prototype for future events [30]

The Stanford Report, May 23, 2011

A Perfect Match—A Social Media Love Story [31]

Firm Follows Form, May 22, 2011

On the burner: Bacon's Six Degrees [32]

The Stanford Daily, May 12, 2011

April 2011

Evaluating the Bone Marrow Challenge [33]

OpenIDEO Field Notes, April 7, 2011

March 2011

Social Media Can Save Your Life, Move Corporations For Good [34]

Time Magazine Techland, March 31, 2011

Can social media save lives? [35]

SocialBeat, March 30, 2011

Ideas Worth Spreading in Tampa Bay [36]

CreativeTampaBay, March 29, 2011

Crowdsourcing a Better World [37]

New York Times Opinionator, March 28, 2011

Brainstorming with OpenIDEO to Save Lives [38]

Beth's Blog, March 22, 2011

Synthesizing the Bone Marrow Challenge [39]

OpenIDEO Field Notes, March 21, 2011

Q&A with Stanford's Katie Pfeiffer [40]

OpenIDEO Field Notes, March 9, 2011

Invitation to Join an Innovative Online Brainstorm Experiment [41]

Power of Social Technology Blog, March 2, 2011

February 2011

OpenIDEO joins Stanford bone marrow effort [42]

The Dish, Stanford Report, February 28, 2011

One Swab at a Time: Registering 100,000 Bone Marrow Donors [43]

Palo Alto Patch, February 22, 2011

Blood cancers and a call for inspiration [44]

Wellsphere blog, February 20, 2011

2011 Most Influential Women in Technology: Jennifer Aaker [45]

Fast Company, 19 February 2011

Make an impact on Bone Marrow Donation [46]

Firm Follow Form, February 19, 2011

Podcast: Jennifer Aaker on using social media to improve public health [47]

1-2-1 with Paul Costillo (Stanford School of Medicine), February 11, 2011

January 2011

Stanford faculty and students launch social media campaign to expand bone marrow donor registry [48]

Scope Medical Blog, January 31, 2011

Getting cheeky [49]

The Stanford Daily, January 20, 2011

Social entrepreneurs' innovations [50]

Deccan Herald, January 5, 2011

December 2010

Stanford Professor Uses Social Media To Draw Marrow Donors [51]

Patch Palo Alto, December 19, 2010

Social media for social change: Stanford professor uses Facebook, Twitter and personal stories to promote bone marrow donations [52]

Stanford Report, December 16, 2010

November 2010

Stanford Professor to make former Indian student’s last wish a reality [53]

The Hindustan Times, November 14, 2010

Stanford CommonWealth Challenge

The Stanford CommonWealth Challenge catalyzes students to self-organize and lead change that contributes to the public good—to our common wealth. Each year the Haas Center will work with faculty to identify and issue at least one challenge related to specific, concrete measurable goal. 

Our hope is that students will respond to the Stanford CommonWealth Challenge and leverage the intellectual, financial, and human resources at Stanford to do something incredible. While the Haas Center will do its best to provide support—meeting space, advising, training, connections to relevant faculty/courses, and some seed funding—the response must be student-directed and student-driven.

The 2010–2011 Challenge: Register 100,000 Bone Marrow Donors

If you were given the opportunity to save a life, would you? A small group of students is needed to lead a truly remarkable effort to save hundreds—possibly thousands—of lives. 

You probably know that Leukemia is a form of cancer of the blood or bone marrow. You might know that bone marrow transplants are a form of treatment. But did you know that certain populations are dramatically under-represented in existing bone marrow registries? The story that gave rise to this effort is that of Sameer Bhatia, a Stanford undergrad-turned-entrepreneur. Learn more about Sameer's story. [1]

Because of this story, the Haas Center is working with Professor Jennifer Aaker and others to find a team of student advisors and a leader to develop a large scale bone marrow registrant drive - targeting 100,000 registrants.  The first step to involvement? Join our the 100K Cheeks Challenge Facebook Group [54].

Principles and Concepts

We believe that the process is important as the product. As students work to accomplish the challenge, we ask that they consider the Haas Center’s Principles of Ethical and Effective Service [55], which will serve as foundational criteria for the competition. In addition to these principles, our work is guided by the following:

• Academic Connections: Identify and seek out relevant faculty within disciplines that will add value to your response to the challenge and deepen your learning about related issues.
• Innovation and Design: Employ new or emerging processes, ideas, technologies, or organizations to solve public problems.
• Entrepreneurship: Perceive and create new opportunities, and to pursue opportunities without regard to the resources they currently control.
• Collaboration: Identify and mobilize the appropriate networks and individuals needed to be successful.
• Cross Sector Engagement: Engage multiple sectors—public/governmental, private, and independent—to solve public problems.
• Multiple Pathways of Engagement: Engage others in multiple public service pathways: direct service, politics/public policy, engaged scholarship, philanthropy, and activism.
• Sustainability: Ensure the effort will be sustainable (in both senses of this word: environmental and longitudinal).

Resources

• The Dragonfly Effect [56] by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith
• Switch [57] by Chip and Dan Heath
• National Marrow Donor Program [58]

For more information, please contact Tom Schnaubelt [11].