Recent School of Nursing graduates (left to right) Brandie Bedore and Mary Garza stand next to the large trophy they and their classmates earned by winning the National Cesar E. Chavez Blood Drive Challenge.
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When Brandie Bedore volunteered to coordinate a blood drive last fall in the School of Nursing, she did not realize what she was getting into. Bedore, who was entering her senior year as a bachelor’s degree student at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, was happy to take on a project to accumulate some service hours.

However, she soon realized that this was the second annual College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) Alumni Association’s (CAMPAA) National Cesar E. Chavez Blood Drive Challenge with the goals of:
• Collecting the most pints of blood in the nation,
• Raising awareness among people of Hispanic origin about blood and organ donation, and
• Honoring Cesar E. Chavez, an American champion for farm workers

CAMP provides scholarships, financial support and other assistance to help children of migrant farm workers obtain a college education.

After a slow start, the blood drive morphed into class project that resulted in a four-day blood drive beginning on Cesar Chavez’s birthday — March 31 — in partnership with the South Texas Blood and Tissue Center (STBTS), University Hospital System (UHS), Fort Sam Houston, Lackland Air Force Base, and Ingram and South Park malls.

Top honors
Best of all, the Health Science Center won first place among 113 U.S. colleges and universities, bringing in a total of 506 pints of blood and helping CAMPPA quadruple the number of registered donors and pints collected from the previous year.

“Miss Brandie Bedore did an exceptional job understanding her role as student organizer,” said Glen G. Galindo, executive director of CAMPAA. “She was very successful at engaging the local community and taking ownership of the campaign. We are very proud of her and appreciative of her hard, enthusiastic work. She also had tremendous staff support.”

Teamwork
Once she obtained approval from her instructor, Adelita Cantu, Ph.D., RN, for this to become a group project for her Community Health Nursing class, the project began to take shape. “We decided that if we were going to do this, let’s make it huge,” Bedore said. “We started delegating tasks and decided the only way that we would have a chance to win this was to go outside of campus into the community.”

• Bedore coordinated the blood drive and partnered with the STBTC.
  
• Mary Garza developed a partnership with Ingram and South Park malls and worked with STBTC to bring mobile vans there for two days. She also helped provide publicity through announcements and remote broadcasts at the malls through her brother, who works at a local radio station and who helped develop a website for the team.
  
• Chelsie Underwood and Sousan Jowlaei partnered with UHS to conduct the blood drive there for two days. Jowlaei also developed the survey completed by each donor.
  
• James Ellis and Jennifer Crockett manned the Fort Sam Houston Blood Bank for two days to collect donor surveys.
  
• Melinda Mann partnered with the blood banks at Lackland Air Force Base and Fort Sam Houston to have their blood donations count towards the Chavez blood drive for two days. She also collected the surveys completed by Lackland donors.

Mary Garza (left) and Melinda Mann (in the blood drop suit) help draw attention at one of the blood drives planned by seven students in the Community Health Nursing class, taught by Adelita Cantu, Ph.D., RN, assistant professor of chronic nursing.

The Hispanic Student Nursing Association assisted by distributing fliers. The blood drive team also received a minigrant from the university and a small donation from their instructor, Dr. Cantu, assistant professor of chronic nursing, for gift cards and fitness equipment they used as incentives to encourage participation in the blood drive.

Class objective achieved
“Brandie and the whole class did a wonderful job and worked very hard to make this successful,” Dr. Cantu said. “They truly embodied the principles of community health nursing during this project, particularly developing numerous community partnerships to ensure its success.”

Community partners pleased with results
And their community partners agreed. Scott Gonzalez, donor recruitment consultant with STBTC, said, “From our standpoint, they did extremely well. From our previous history we projected that 30 pints would be donated each day. They brought in 27 pints the first day and 37 pints the next day, which is 64 pints, so they exceeded 100 percent. We consider it to be a great drive.”

Cindy Moreno, coordinator of blood donor services at UHS, agreed. “Fifty-three units were collected during the two days here and that was great,” she said. “All the units drawn were used here in the hospital. A lot of the blood products are used in the trauma center, but also by the University Transplant Center,” a partnership of the UT Health Science Center and UHS.

Pints collected at the military bases were sent oversees for wounded warriors, said Bedore, who hopes to eventually become a flight nurse in the 433rd Airlift Wing based in San Antonio.

Setting the bar
“The biggest piece of advice I have for next year’s team is to continue developing partnerships,” she said. “We have done a lot of smaller community service projects in the past, but I think this really opens the door for the School of Nursing. We can now push ourselves to do bigger things. It’s important to take the next step outside the box to make a bigger impact in the community.”