Psychosocial Issues in Umbilical Cord Blood Donation

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As medical advances continue to make the transplantation of stem cells a more successful treatment option for hematologic malignancies, bone marrow failure syndromes, and solid tumor cancers, there will be an increasing need for such cells supplied by unrelated donors. Although these stem cells have traditionally been supplied by living unrelated bone marrow donors who may face significant physical and psychological risks to donate, new procedures of gathering stem cells that may decrease donor risks are currently being explored. One of these procedures involves the collection of umbilical cord blood from mothers who have recently delivered a healthy infant. Although several public cord blood banks have been established in the U.S. to collect and store umbilical cord blood, no studies of donors experiences during and after donation currently exist. Thus, the proposed study is designed to examine the background, psychosocial, and donation-related characteristics of mothers who are approached by representatives of public umbilical cord blood banks and asked to donate their newborn's cord blood for future public use. In addition to description maternal characteristics, we will also investigate the relative influences of these characteristics, and the characteristics and strategies of cord blood banks themselves (e.g., donor selection, education, and consent procedures) on donation-related outcomes (e.g., decision to donate, satisfaction, ambivalence). Cross-sectional questionnaire data will be gathered either 2-3 weeks or 8-9 weeks post delivery from 1,800 mothers who are approached for cold blood donation- and agree or decline to donate by one of three public cord blood banks. In addition, data on cord blood bank characteristics and strategies will be gathered concurrent with maternal data collection. In addition, data on cord blood bank characteristics and strategies will be gathered concurrent with maternal data collection. These data will allow us to (a) describe the characteristics of mothers who agree to (or do not agree to) donate, (b) examine the relationship of maternal background, psychosocial and donation-related outcomes, (c) examine the role of cord blood bank strategies and organization factors in predicting maternal-donation related outcomes, and (d) investigate the synergistic effects of maternal and bank characteristics on donation-related outcomes.