One of our friends, Darryl Dugenio, is currently facing a rare and life-threatening condition. He is one of the 0.000004% (Johns Hopkins University, 2017) of people suffering with aplastic anemia, a disease in which a person’s body is unable to produce enough new blood cells (health.harvard.edu, 2019). He transitioned from a lively and healthy high school student to a patient needing a blood transfusion weekly. The only way for him to recover completely is through acquiring a perfect stem cell match to save his life. However, due to the lack of ethnically diverse donors (GiftofLife.org, n.d.) and him being a Filipino American, an ethnic minority, it is significantly harder for him to find a genetic match for a stem cell transplant. Once hearing about our friend’s story, it quickly became our mission to raise awareness about his situation, and others like it. We wanted to bring light upon the many difficulties within the stem cell donation registry, and by doing so, we believe that we can make an impact.
Our project has 3 main goals: to rally awareness for a fellow Heritage High School student, to bring light to the ethnic disparities in the stem cell registry, and finally, to eliminate the fears and stigmatic beliefs regarding the intensity of the donation process. We first started small as we educated our school and community through various volunteering opportunities, presentations, and even led a spirit week at our school. As we garnered an audience and partnered with a bigger organization, we were able to host a swab drive at our very own school. In addition, we presented to a larger audience at the International Model Exposition and at one of the Texas Legends’ games. We have continued to hold drives at numerous other locations and strengthen our online following. In just 6 months, we have been able to add over 400 new members to the registry, with numbers increasing regularly. Our school district has been very gracious to allow us to participate in 5 news interviews by FOX 4 Dallas, FOX 7 Austin, NBC 5, WFAA 8, and ABC Waco News, where we were able to make a massive community outreach, compiling over 7.5 million views. We were also able to film PSA’s with candidates and representatives of Congress to bring awareness and educate many potential donors about the simplicity of the process and the impact they would make by joining the donor registry.
