Building An Ethnically Diverse Cord Blood Inventory: A Single Institution's Initiative To Increase African American Donations

Abstract

In 2005, the United States Congress passed the Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act. A central component of this legislation was the development of the National Cord Blood Inventory (NCBI). A competitive bidding process was instituted and to date three cohorts of banks have been funded with the charge to collect and store 150,000 new cord blood units. A goal in the development of this new inventory is to increase the number of cord blood units from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. The St.