What's New in Academe
Researchers aim to increase organ donation in the workplace
Archived article from Nov 15, 2004
By Ken Branson
What would inspire you to sign an organ donor card? Susan Morgan, associate professor of communication, is asking that question, and she’s looking to the workplace for answers. Less than 40 percent of Americans have signed organ donor cards, according to Morgan.
“Work is an experience most Americans have in common, and we think one of the best ways to reach people with the organ donor message is through their workplaces,” says Morgan, who will use the internal communication infrastructures of New Jersey employers to get the message out about the need for donors and to measure its effectiveness.
Supported by a three-year, $1.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Morgan is forming an alliance of 45 employers of all sizes, known as the Workplace Partners for Life.
Employees of each organization will be the targets of a two-month campaign. Some organizations will see a “low-intensity” campaign that will include brochures distributed through payroll or other internal systems and articles in company newsletters. Those stories will include testimonials from employees affected personally by organ donation. Other organizations will see a “high-intensity” campaign that will include all those tactics, plus on-site presentations by representatives of the alliance.
“We want to have as wide a variety of organizational types as possible,” Morgan says. “That’s because we want to know how the structure of the organization affects the effectiveness of the campaign.”
The Workplace Partnership for Life already includes such employers as Pathmark, Merrill Lynch, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, Shrewsbury State Bank, the Borough of Highland Park, Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center, Adient Corporation, William Paterson University and Kean University.
Morgan and her colleagues hope to select the remaining employers by the end of the year and to begin their campaigns by February 2005.
Last year, Morgan conducted a similar campaign at six universities around the country, encouraging their faculty and staff to sign organ-donor cards.
In two of the six, she conducted a combined campaign of mass media and interpersonal communications. In another two universities, she relied entirely on mass media. The remaining two schools served as the “control group,” in which no campaign was conducted. The results of that study are still being compiled.
Return to the Nov 15, 2004 issue
|
