BDO sat down with Ashley Singleton, a research associate at Georgia Health Policy Center in Atlanta, Georgia. She shares the truth about sickle cell blood donation and donating blood in the Black community.
BDO: Does Sickle Cell run in your family at all?
Ashley Singleton: No, not in my family, but I do have a really close, you know everyone has auntie, so I have an “auntie” who isn’t really my aunt and my cousin who has sickle cell disease.
So when I was growing up I knew Vanessa was in and out of the hospital but I didn’t really understand what was going on.
So when I started working on this project which is all related to minority blood donations and blood transfusions, I called my mom the same day I was working on the project and I said Mom did aunt Jackie ever ask you to donate blood?
She said, “no but if she would’ve asked me I would’ve done it.” And I think that’s what we see and what we find a lot of times is that people just don’t know.
They don’t know it is necessary.
It’s necessary not only under the circumstances of a natural disaster or a car accident. It’s needed every single day for people like sickle cell patients. Or even those who have other um blood disorders like Thalassemia.