(P-BC-69) Recovery of High School Donor Participation Post-COVID

Background/Case Studies: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted high school blood drives nationwide, with dramatic drops in student participation. Understanding how programs have bounced back—or not—offers insight into the sector’s resilience. This study examines donor trends among 16–19-year-olds at mobile (primarily school-based) blood drives, tracking high school drive activity before and after COVID-19 in South Texas.

Study

Design/Methods: Individual donor data were used to count donors aged 16–19 at mobile blood drives from the 2018–2019 through 2024–2025 school years. A comprehensive high school list was filtered to exclude platelet-only events and limited-time drives, with potential human error. For each school year, schools were categorized as “new” (first-time hosts), “returning” (continued hosts), or “lost” (no drives after prior-year activity). Counts of new, returning, and lost high schools were then tabulated to yield the results shown in the table.

Results/Findings: As the table demonstrates, the total pool of potential host schools held steady at 235 annually. New/returning high schools plunged from 153 in 2018–2019 to 74 in 2020–2021, then partially rebounded to 125 by 2024–2025. New hosts fell from 153 to 1 in 2020–2021, climbed modestly to 7 in 2021–2022, and plateaued thereafter. Returning schools recovered from 73 in 2020–2021 to 124 in 2024–2025 but remain below the 2019–2020 peak of 136. Schools lost peaked at 69 in 2020–2021 and later stabilized around 14–16. Donor counts mirrored these patterns, dropping from 17,922 pre-pandemic to 3,040 in 2020–2021, rising to 9,181 in 2023–2024, then slipping to 6,482 in 2024–2025 (as of March 2025).

Conclusions: Recovery among high school blood drives has stalled. Despite glimpses of rebound, both new host schools and donor numbers lag behind pre-COVID levels. To reignite participation, blood drives must become woven into school culture—through initiatives like awarding one NHS hour per donation and offering scholarships, strategies underscored by the success of the Honors Cord Program. Such integration may be key to building sustainable donor pipelines in a post-pandemic landscape.