![New Way to Increase Organ Donor Registrations New Way to Increase Organ Donor Registrations](https://images.medindia.net/health-images/1200_1000/organ-donation-ribbon.jpg)
‘By leveraging behavioral science to design our interventions, the simple method contributes to understanding how to reduce the intention-action gap in the context of organ donation, improve public policy, and enhance social welfare.
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Current statistics on organ donation point to an ever-increasing demand, yet inadequate supply of available donors. For example, in the United States, there are over 113,000 individuals currently on the transplant waiting list and 22 people die each day waiting. And the gap between those needing transplants and those receiving them continues to widen. With thousands currently waiting for organ transplants, the need for donors is urgent. One way to address the ever-growing demand is to increase the number of individuals registered to donate. While the vast majority of people support organ donation, many do not take the steps to register. ![twitter](https://images.medindia.net/icons/news/social/twitter.png)
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Low registration rates are especially common in countries with explicit consent registration policies--that is, individuals must opt in to become organ donors--compared to countries with presumed consent policies--where individuals are organ donors by default but can opt out. Although some suggest changing the default may be a promising intervention, the impact on actual donations has been mixed due to, among other things, uncertainties about a deceased person's donation preferences.
Furthermore, changing registration policies involves implementation challenges and ethical considerations surrounding informed consent. To date, most jurisdictions have maintained their existing policies, thus prompting the question, what can be done within explicit consent systems to improve organ donor registration rates? Prior research provides a good understanding of predictors of organ donation attitudes and intentions, yet little is known about how to increase actual registrations.
To address these limitations, the research team conducted a field experiment in the Province of Ontario to test behavioral marketing interventions targeting information and altruistic motives in an effort to increase new organ donor registrations in a prompted choice context. Along with the interventions, the researchers streamlined the registration process (i.e., intercepting customers at the time of decision, handing out promotional materials upon arrival for customers to consider while waiting) and updated the design of the registration form to increase the saliency of their interventions (i.e., a simplified form printed on cardstock using colored accents).
The researchers say that "Our paper contributes to the limited evidence for low-cost and scalable solutions to increase organ donor registrations within the current explicit consent systems. Our field experiment demonstrates how intercepting customers with promotional materials at the right time (an information brochure and perspective-taking prompts), along with other process and design improvements, can increase new organ donor registrations" says Robitaille. Specifically, Tsai points out, "the best-performing condition, prompting perspective-taking through reciprocal altruism ("If you needed a transplant would you have one? If so, please help save lives and register today.") significantly increased actual registration rates from 4.1% in the control condition to 7.4%, an 80% increase."
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Source-Eurekalert