Focus on Community-Level As Important As Individual Factors To Increase Organ Donations

The characteristics of one’s community may be as important as individual factors on the decision to become organ donor, according to a new study.

A link between sociodemographic/social capital measures and organ donor registrations across 4,466 Massachusetts neighborhoods has been seen in the study that was published in The Milbank Quarterly.

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The research suggests that in order to increase organ donation registrations, the future health policies adopt a community-level focus. Shortage of organs for transplantation has reached unprecedented levels. Despite national and state campaigns to increase organ donations, organ donor registration rates vary widely.

“We found that community-level sociodemographic and social capital variables explain more than half the variation that we observed in organ donor registrations in Massachusetts,” said first author Keren Ladin, an assistant professor and health policy researcher in the department of occupational therapy at Tufts University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

“Neighborhoods that have lower social capital, as measured by high levels of both racial segregation and violent crime, and low socioeconomic status and voting participation, also have lower levels of organ donor registration compared to other Massachusetts neighborhoods.”

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Factors that appear to have a positive relationship to increased donor registrations include higher income, employment and owner-occupied housing. When populations are less isolated and better racially integrated, they exhibit higher rates of altruistic behavior such as organ donor registration, the findings suggested.

The study reinforces the importance of tailored messages at the neighborhood level and strategic partnerships with community-based organizations in the effort to increase organ donation.

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Ladin and colleagues obtained community-level measures and social capital characteristics including residential segregation, voter registration and participation, residential mobility, violent-death rate and religious characteristics. Using 3.3 million geocoded records from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles that were linked to socio-demographic data from the U.S. Census.

“Research has focused on individual-level determinants, without much consideration for contextual factors, such as neighborhood environment and social organizations. A better understanding of these contextual determinants of organ donor registrations, including social capital, may enhance efforts to increase organ donation.”

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“The findings may help explain differences in rates of organ donor registration among communities of color and suggest that interventions tailored to communities, rather than individuals, may help to increase organ donation,” said Ladin.

“Like voting or vaccination, organ donor designation is a collective action problem. The community benefits are significant, but individual incentives to participate are low. Social capital increases the probability of collective action by fostering norms of reciprocity and cooperation while increasing the costs of noncompliance,” she continued.

More than 120,000 Americans are waiting for organ donations, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

Source-Medindia