Blood donation barriers and facilitators of Sub‐Saharan African migrants and minorities in Western high‐income countries: a systematic review of the literature

Abstract

The findings of this review can be used as a starting point to develop recruitment and retention strategies for Sub-Saharan African persons. Further research is needed to gain more insight in the role of these determinants in specific contexts as socioeconomic features, personal histories and host country regulations may differ per country.

Barriers and motivators of Ghanaian and African‐Surinamese migrants to donate blood

“…Also, preferences for donating within the own community or family, and symbolism surrounding blood are indicated in various studies (Charbonneau & Tran, ; Grassineau et al, ). But a systematic review on African donation barriers and facilitators also demonstrated that general factors play an important role, such as fear, convenience, and eligibility (Glynn et al, ; Klinkenberg et al, ).…”

The relation between blood donor recruitment and donor diversity and loyalty in the Netherlands

“…Men, compared to women, more often reported that they donated blood to get a regular health check, because it makes them feel good about themselves, and because they were influenced by friends and family [24,25]. African minorities more often reported to be motivated by health checks and community involved recruitment campaigns compared to the Western majority populations [19,26]. It is reasonable to suggest that these groups need a different recruitment approach than women and people from Western majority populations.…”

“…Current donors are generally willing to help with recruiting new donors [30], and when a potential donor is personally asked by another donor, he or she is more likely to register as a donor as well [31]. This might be promising for increasing diversity of the donor pool, as men and African minority populations report social interventions as one of the motivations to start donating blood [19,32].…”

“…Our recent systematic reviews showed that motivations and barriers to donate blood differ between men and women, and (non-)donors from African backgrounds [19,20].…”

January 2020: What lies ahead?

“…The papers are mainly from the work published in the first half of the year, with many papers from the themed issue on donor medicine (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/13653148/2019/29/S1). These papers include an overview of the Scandat study by Edgren; a review of recruitment and retention of African donors by Klinkenberg et al; two papers from Denmark on iron deficiency; and the healthy donor effect by Rigas, Ullum and Petersen and colleagues …”