Donor recruitment research.

Since the provision of blood and blood products depends entirely on the willingness of donors to spend their blood for this purpose, we felt that an International Forum of Vox Sanguinis should be devoted to donor recruitment and in particular to ‘donor loyalty’ and to ‘barriers to blood donation’. To obtain information on these subjects, the following questions were sent to experts in the field. Donor loyalty: Question 1 . How important do you consider donor loyalty and for which reasons? Question 2 . Do you have a method to evaluate donor loyalty? Question 3 . Which factors do you believe to have a positive, and which factors a negative effect on donor loyalty? Question 4 . Have you been able to influence donor loyalty and, if so, how? Barriers to blood donation: Question 5 . Have you been able to identify the key barriers that prevent eligible subjects to become blood donors? Question 6 . Which percentage of first-time donors do not return to donate for a second time and have you learned their reason(s) for not returning? Question 7 . How have you been able to persuade first time (and repeat) donors to continue to donate if they were not inclined to do so. Unfortunately, we have been able to obtain only five contributions to this forum, which, however, seem of sufficient interest to warrant its publication.