Culturally Tailored and Community-Based Social Media Intervention to Promote Organ Donation Awareness among Asian Americans: “Heart of Gold”

Abstract

Organ donation disparities among ethnic minorities have persisted for decades, especially among Asian Americans (AAs). AAs represent a substantial proportion of the national transplant waitlist but have historically had the lowest organ donation rate in the United States. Community based and culturally tailored (CBCT) interventions are needed to increase donor designation within AA communities. In collaboration with local AA organizations and representatives and national partners, we developed a culturally and linguistically tailored video using a family appeal to promote donor designation among AAs. The video was distributed on social media platforms in two stages from February 17 to September 17, 2021 and tracked Reaches, Impressions, Views, and Engagements as part of a larger evaluation. The results revealed higher social media activities and engagements on Facebook than on Instagram with and without paid advertisements, although the paid approach yielded 5 to 16 times higher viewer engagement. Over six months, the video reached 36,845 AAs and gained 53,308 Impressions, 20,139 Views, 2,455 Engagements, and 232 visits to the organ donation registration page. The findings indicated Facebook and CBCT approaches as effective communication strategies to potentially raise AAs’ organ donation awareness, especially among AA females over 45 years of age. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Acknowledgments

We thank participants for contributing to this study. We also thank the Indochinese American Council, the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, and the Filipino Executive Council of Greater Philadelphia for their partnership and support of the project. We are also grateful to our Community Advisory Board Members – Ernest Arcilla, Jay Hilario, Grace Wu Kong, Ferdinand Luyun, Ruth Luyun, Shirley Moy, Jen Ordillas, Denise Schlatter, Stephanie Sun, Hanh Tran, Le-Quyen Vu, and Cecilia Vo – for their leadership and guidance with all aspects of this study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2022.2119445.

Additional information

Funding

The work was funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), Award R01 DK11488 (PI: Siminoff; The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.