National Multiethnic Donor Awareness Month

UNITED STATES–August is National Multiethnic Donor Awareness Month. This national observance was initiated in 1998 as a single day to increase our nation’s consciousness of the need for more organ and tissue donors from multicultural backgrounds. In 2020, this nationwide effort to engage and educate multicultural communities about the need for organ and tissue donors was expanded to encompass the entire month of August.

Although organs are not matched according to ethnicity, and people of different races frequently match one another, individuals waiting for a transplant have a better chance of receiving an organ if there are large numbers of donors from their ethnic background.

This is because compatible blood types and tissue markers (critical qualities for donor/recipient matching) are more likely to be found among members of the same ethnicity.