Commitment to health equity

We know that intent is nothing without impact. We’ve intentionally structured our strategic plans and investment choices to bring our commitment to access to life. Access is also a key factor in considerations such as determining which disease states to direct research money to, the methods of transplant we recommend and the placement of our collection centers. All our decisions are made in service of achieving equitable access to transplant.

Our mission: We save lives through cell therapy. Our vision: to create a world where every patient can receive their life-saving cell therapy.

As we look to the future, we know that a strong plan will enable us to have an exponentially larger impact on the field of cell therapy. Our mission and our vision headline our latest five-year strategic plan, kicked off in fiscal year 2024. It prepares us to combat future challenges by focusing on three pillars: accelerating progress, being a world-class partner and expanding access. Two of those have direct ties to addressing disparities in cell therapy.

• Accelerating progress: Our goal is to advance the cell therapy ecosystem to provide cures so all patients thrive.
• Expand access: We’ll work to remove the barriers for access to life-saving cell therapies.

While we’ve always been devoted to saving lives, we know it takes a concerted effort on behalf of our ethnically diverse patients and donors to rebuild trust and meet unique needs. Someone’s background shouldn’t be a barrier to getting the treatment they need.

To that end, over the past few years, we’ve committed ourselves to supporting lasting change by:

• Earmarking $250,000 by the end of 2021 to partner with community and civic organizations serving diverse communities such as the National Urban League Young Professionals
• Doubling the number of lives saved in underserved populations with no discernable difference in outcomes by 2023
• Increasing awareness and education in the Black and African American community about the resources and potential cures available to treat sickle cell and other blood diseases
• Adding a paid community engagement fellowship in the Twin Cities focused on building relationships and increasing trust with ethnically diverse communities
• Increasing the number of interns from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) by 50%
• Providing continuous encouragement and resources for our employees to donate and volunteer in impacted communities near them
• Increasing our resources throughout the organization to become a place where everyone belongs
• Supporting a culture of inclusion at all levels and building relationships with community organizations and experts who can magnify our NMDP^SM goals

We’re proud to announce that we’ve been able to meet each and every commitment.

Patients face many obstacles on their road to receiving cell therapy. Their ethnicity shouldn’t be one of them. Here’s a look at what we’re doing to remove those obstacles.

Not every patient has a full donor match on the NMDP Registry^SM, especially those with ethnically diverse ancestries. A person is most likely to match a donor of a similar ethnic background because the genes that doctors use to pair patients and donors are inherited. Unfortunately, the registry isn’t diverse enough to ensure every patient finds a fully matched donor.

Our Donor for All initiative aims to safely unlock access to blood stem cell transplant through many innovative research efforts using partially matched donors. This will significantly expand patients’ options for suitable donors—all while providing outcomes in line with using a fully matched donor.

Through this program, clinical operations partners work locally with transplant centers and community hematology/oncology practices to understand the unique barriers faced by their patients who have reduced access and understand how we can best partner to overcome those barriers.

Cord blood as a graft source for transplant continues to help ethnically diverse patients receive transplant. Matching requirements for cord blood are less stringent than those of an adult donor, allowing cord blood to overcome human leukocyte antigen (HLA) matching barriers. We’ve kicked off a variety of programs to support transplant centers and their patients in leveraging cord blood as a graft source more often and with more ease.

Because it’s less likely that a patient who is ethnically diverse will have a matched, available donor, we’re taking a proactive approach in supporting the transplant center’s search. For example, if a transplant center hasn’t selected the patient’s race/ethnicity in the search and order tool, we’ll reach out to them to get that information. Our team of immunogenetic specialists and registry data quality professionals can then use this type of information to conduct an even more in-depth donor search.

Elias Lemon, our VP, has teamed up with Jarvis Sam, advisor to NMDP and the founder of the Rainbow Disruption, to ensure we are fostering an inclusive and innovative culture that drives our mission to save lives through cell therapy. Jarvis played a key role in establishing NMDP's long-term strategy and developing several of our key committees.

We’ll work together to continue:

• Supporting inclusive leadership education and training
• Further investing in our employee resource groups (ERGs), which currently number seven. Employees have also set up additional affinity groups—informal, voluntary groups—to advance inclusive excellence throughout the organization.

While the NMDP Registry remains the most diverse in the world, for many, a donor match doesn’t exist. More people are needed to join so patients have a greater chance of finding a match. We’re using innovative approaches to recruit not only younger and more ethnically diverse donors but those who will step up and help a patient when needed.

Our regional teams are building sustainable relationships with trusted organizations and partners within communities. Other regional initiatives include:

• Enhancing messaging, programs and tools to meet individual needs and barriers
• Partnerships with HBCUs
• An Asian American and Pacific Islander member enrollment program

In addition, to better meet the needs of Hispanic patients, we expanded our operations to Mexico in 2017. Since then, the NMDP México^SM team has made significant progress in recruiting in the country. To date, there are nearly 150,000 potential donors on the NMDP Registry in Mexico.