BYU students will have an opportunity this month to register with the National Marrow Donor Program, or NMDP, to potentially save a life.
According to the BYU Life Sciences Belonging Clinic, which is organizing this event, students can visit and register at four booths that will be set up from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 17 to 19 at several spots around campus.
Julianne Grose is a professor of biology and Associate Vice President of Belonging at BYU. She is also the faculty director for the Life Science Belonging Clinic. Grose has been running NMDP programs since 2003.
Students participating at these booths will register their personal information before doing a cheek swab, Grose said.
With this information, the NMDP can contact donors who match someone in need of a donation. Often, these are patients diagnosed with a blood cancer or disorder.
Over 41 million donors are registered with the NMDP, and donors have helped over 130,000 people in need, according to the NMDP website. According to Grose, thousands have registered for this event at BYU in the last seven years. NMDP has contacted 53 of those registered to donate.
“A lot of good starts with a little swab,” the BYU Belonging NMDP posters read.
For the patient in need of a donation, a match from the registry is life saving.
“A bone marrow transplant is only done if someone is otherwise going to die, if it’s their only treatment option,” Grose said. “You’re literally someone’s only option at life.”
When Grose’s brother-in-law passed away of lymphoma after there wasn’t a match for a needed stem cell transplant through NMDP, she decided she needed to get the word out.
“I always thought if people knew about it, they would do it,” Grose said.
Students who haven’t heard of NMDP before became interested in registering because of the work that BYU Belonging is doing with the organization.
Daisy Stephenson is a BYU student who first heard about the opportunity to register with the NMDP from the BYU registry event.
“It’s so cool that we can save someone’s life so easily,” Stephenson said. “Something little like donating for a few hours can make such a huge impact."
The Life Sciences Belonging Clinic encourages everyone to register and is trying to get more diversity and representatives in the registry.
The more people register, the higher the chance of a patient finding a match.
“We need a lot of people from different ethnic backgrounds, different histories in order for everyone to have an equal chance at getting a donor,” Grose said.
Students can register with the NMDP at the BYU booths March 17 to 19, or at any time on the NMDP website.