National Pool of Eligible Blood Donors Smaller

By William Riley, Ph.D.

It was previously estimated that more than 177 million people were eligible to donate blood in the United States. However, last fall at the University of Minnesota my colleague Jeffrey McCullough and I found that only 111 million individuals are actually eligible. The pool of eligible blood donors was overestimated by 59 percent.

Why the gap? Because the typical method used to determine how many individuals are eligible to donate blood in the United States used only age as an exclusionary factor. Yet, in recent years, the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) has implemented more than 31 new donation criteria for blood donors in order to ensure recipient safety. This new AABB criteria significantly reduced the number of eligible donors. So, we thought a new model should be developed in order to more accurately estimate the size of the donor population. This also allows us to better understand national donation trends and patterns.

After considering the AABB¿s criteria, we determined that approximately 37 percent of the total United States population is eligible to donate blood. This number is based on our model that considers the new national blood donation criteria and excludes individuals from donation due to factors such as high-risk behavior leading to disease exposure, presence of chronic diseases, and age. The previous model incorrectly included more than 66 million people who do not meet one or more of the blood donation criteria as eligible donors in its estimate.

Our research doesn¿t mean that the national blood supply is in immediate danger. In fact, by more accurately determining how many people are eligible to donate, we learned that voluntary blood donor rates are much higher than present data suggest. We estimate that voluntary blood donor rates are approximately 59 percent higher than previously estimated.

While this new estimate is promising, your local blood bank still depends on regular donors to keep their blood supply strong; someone in the United States needs blood every two seconds. January is Blood Donor Awareness Month, and we encourage you to learn more about donor guidelines. For more information, and to find a location to donate blood near you, visit http://www.givelife.org.

For us, these research results are only the beginning of our research on this important topic. McCullough and I have several additional research projects underway. We are working with six blood banks across the nation to apply our research data and model to their databases, and with the American Red Cross to apply our model to their database of 100 million donations. We also have initiated a study to investigate the health impact of improving blood safety in sub-Saharan Africa, and plan to work as consultants with Emory University to look at blood donation trends and patterns in the African-American community.

William Riley, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota¿s School of Public Health.

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