American Red Cross Research Articles

Assessing American Red Cross First Aid mobile app user trends: Implications for resilience.

Disasters have devastated communities, impacted the economy, and resulted in a significant increase in injuries. As the use of mobile technology increasingly becomes a common aspect of everyday life, it is important to understand how it can be used as a resource. The authors examined the use of American Red Cross mobile apps and aimed to characterize user trends to better understand how mobile apps can help bolster individual and community preparedness, resilience, and response efforts. Tornado data were obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service. Data for the mobile apps were provided by the American Red Cross. All data were reviewed for 2013, 2014, and three specific tornado events. Data were organized in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and then graphed or mapped using ArcMap 10.2(™). Between 2013 and 2014, 1,068 tornado watches and 3,682 tornado warnings were issued. Additionally, 37,957,560 Tornado app users and 1,289,676 First Aid app users were active from 2013 to 2014. Overall, there was an increase in the use of American Red Cross mobile apps during tornado occurrences. Yet the increase does not show a consistent correlation with the number of watches and warnings issued. Mobile apps can be a resourceful tool. This study shows that mobile app use increases during a disaster. The findings indicate that there is potential to use mobile apps for building resilience as the apps provide information to support individuals and communities in helping before, during, and after disasters.

Educating Children on Water Safety for Drowning Prevention

Drowning is accepted as one of the most leading causes of unintentional injuries and a leading unintentional cause of injury-related deaths in many countries as well as in Turkey. We conducted a water safety education programme among secondary school children aged between 10 and 14 years to test an active measure. Children were trained about seven subjects from American Red Cross Longfellow’s WHALE Tales program and on lifeline throw (LT). Pre- and post-tests were used to collect data which was used for statistical analyses. Results showed a significant increase in knowledge (32 %) and in LT (476.2 %) (p < 0.05). Among sub-groups’ of independent variables except “city” and “gender”, no significant differences were found. An active approach for drowning prevention was tested by this study and according to our findings; we conclude that such a water safety education programme can help increasing knowledge and safe lifesaving skills of children.

Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response: There's An App for That.

Smartphone applications (or apps) are becoming increasingly popular with emergency responders and health care providers, as well as the public as a whole. There are thousands of medical apps available for Smartphones and tablet computers, with more added each day. These include apps to view textbooks, guidelines, medication databases, medical calculators, and radiology images. Hypothesis/Problem With an ever expanding catalog of apps that relate to disaster medicine, it is hard for both the lay public and responders to know where to turn for effective Smartphone apps. A systematic review of these apps was conducted. A search of the Apple iTunes store (Version 12; Apple Inc.; Cupertino, California USA) was performed using the following terms obtained from the PubMed Medical Subject Headings Database: Emergency Preparedness, Emergency Responders, Disaster, Disaster Planning, Disaster Medicine, Bioterrorism, Chemical Terrorism, Hazardous Materials (HazMat), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). After excluding any unrelated apps, a working list of apps was formed and categorized based on topics. Apps were grouped based on applicability to responders, the lay public, or regional preparedness, and were then ranked based on iTunes user reviews, value, relevance to audience, and user interface. This search revealed 683 applications and was narrowed to 219 based on relevance to the field. After grouping the apps as described above, and subsequently ranking them, the highest quality apps were determined from each group. The Community Emergency Response Teams and FEMA had the best apps for National Disaster Medical System responders. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had high-quality apps for emergency responders in a variety of fields. The National Library of Medicine's Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders (WISER) app was an excellent app for HazMat responders. The American Red Cross had the most useful apps for natural disasters. Numerous valuable apps for public use, including alert apps, educational apps, and a well-made regional app, were also identified. Smartphone applications are fast becoming essential to emergency responders and the lay public. Many high-quality apps existing in various price ranges and serving different populations were identified. This field is changing rapidly and it deserves continued analysis as more apps are developed.

The Cause Cue Effect: Cause‐Related Marketing and Consumer Health Perceptions

Many for‐profit companies (e.g., Kraft, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Keebler, 5‐Hour Energy) are partnering with health‐oriented nonprofits (e.g., Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Susan G. Komen for Breast Cancer Research, American Red Cross) to make purchase‐contingent donations. Companies use cause‐related marketing to improve brand image and goodwill for their food products and companies. Prior research has examined how food‐related cues can create consumer misperceptions; however, consumer perceptions related to corporate communications (e.g., the use of cause cues) has received little research attention. This research explores consumer reactions to cause cues and finds that adding a health cause to a food package significantly increases product health perceptions, and, usually, product attitude, and purchase intentions (i.e., the cause cue effect) in both a student sample (Studies 1 and 2) and an adult sample on Amazon's mTurk (Study 3). Implications for cueing and inference‐making literature, and for consumer health, and policymakers are discussed.

Psychiatrists Who Volunteered After Katrina Look Back on Lessons

Psychiatrists Who Volunteered After Katrina Look Back on Lessons

American Red Cross posters and the cultural politics of motherhood in World War I

Scholars have long held that World War I markedly impacted women's participation in the public sphere as questions of appropriate wartime participation for women arose. Posters were an important tool for communicating notions of feminine citizenship and patriotism during the US involvement in the war. In this article, I explore the influence of the US involvement in World War I on social constructions of white femininity and citizenship through their portrayal in American Red Cross posters produced between 1914 and 1919. These posters offer a distinct visual documentation of the cultural shift in the portrayal of, and the insistence on, white women's – particularly nurses’ – responsibilities during wartime. I argue that the sentiments and language of the newly splintered women's movements were co-opted into the service of the war and were further emboldened with religious sentiments. American Red Cross posters called upon women to enact their presumed innate nurturing tendencies, and by extension, their feminine citizenship, at both the home and warfronts. In this way, the labor of the private sphere was drawn into the service of the war but without fully admitting women into the public sphere.

Deriving Meaning for Social Franchising From Commercial Franchising and Social Enterprise

Auntie Anne's Pretzels, the American Red Cross, and IKEA are franchises for a social benefit, but are they social franchises? There is a diversity of perceptions of what is meant by the term social franchising but no consensus on the precise meaning. Given that social franchising is a relatively new area of research and that a crucial first step in research on any topic is to define its parameters, this article derives a set of indicators for the phenomenon of social franchising by bringing together three strands of scholarship: social franchising, commercial franchising, and social enterprise.

A consistent course of events or a series of coincidences: nursing in Poland from the 19(th) to the 21(st) century.

The development of nursing began in Poland much later than it did elsewhere, for instance in the United Kingdom, the United States, or Germany, and it came up against difficult conditions. After a brief twenty-year period of development between 1918 and 1939, it almost stalled during the war (1939-45), only to be followed by nearly twenty years of chaos. Nursing started to come out of this difficult period at the beginning of the 1960s. The turn of the 21st century saw the emergence of extensive professional development and training opportunities for nurses. This change was brought about as much by political, social and economic issues, health care requirements, and the advancement of science, medicine, the birth of humanitarism, the growth of the feminist movement, the European Agreement on the Instruction and Education of Nurses, the WHO European Strategy for Nursing and Midwifery Education, the Bologna declaration, as well as the activities undertaken by the European Union, the International Council of Nurses, the American and Polish Red Cross, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Polish Association of Nurses, and the professional self-governing body. The transformation of nursing into an independent profession was further boosted by physicians deeply involved in the issue and female pioneers of nursing.

The Activities of American Red Cross Women during the Vietnam War

The Activities of American Red Cross Women during the Vietnam War

Science, politics, and the end of the lifelong gay blood donor ban.

Science, politics, and the end of the lifelong gay blood donor ban.

MAPPING THE WORLD – A NEW APPROACH FOR VOLUNTEERED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION IN THE CLOUD

Abstract. The OSM project provides a geodata basis for the entire world under the CC-SA licence agreement. But some parts of the world are mapped more densely compared to other regions. However, many less developed countries show a lack of valid geo-information. Africa for example is a sparsely mapped continent. During a huge Ebola outbreak in 2014 the lack of data became apparent. Help organization like the American Red Cross and the Humanitarian Openstreetmap Team organized mappings campaign to fill the gaps with valid OSM geodata. This paper gives a short introduction into this mapping activity.

Nursing rural America: perspectives from the early 20th century

Tracing the history of nursing in rural America during the first half of the 20th century, this well-researched book describes how nurses shaped health care delivery in a variety of rural environments, and analyzes how insights from their remarkable achievements in the face of formidable barriers can be applied to health care today. The book examines the multiple factors that influenced how and why nurses responded to the health care needs of rural residents, with coverage of Rural Nursing in the advent of the American Red Cross, to Mary Breckinridge and her legendary Frontier Nursing Service. Through case histories, it depicts how nurses, working in the hinterlands of place, race, class, and ethnicity, broke geographic, cultural, and economic barriers to provide quality care.<br Based on nine case studies throughout rural America, the book identifies how nursing care was delivered to rural communities during the first five decades of the 20th century (before the advent of Medicare and Medicaid), and analyzes the impact of gender, class, race, policy, and place on rural health care delivery. It describes how nurses used ingenuity and self-reliance in order to practice to the full extent of their education, and explains how they provided access to care and health education in the face of many barriers. The book also highlights nurses' advocacy for their often disenfranchised patients, and examines how we can learn from their achievements to provide quality health care today.

What to do about transfusion‐related acute lung injury?

BackgroundIn recent years, blood centres in several countries have taken measures to effectively reduce the risk of transfusion‐related acute lung injury (TRALI) from plasma transfusion but challenges remain.MethodsThis article reviews recently published studies and data on TRALI from the American Red Cross haemovigilance programme.ResultsSince 2008, over 95% of the approximately 1·6 million plasma components distributed annually for transfusion by the American Red Cross is from male donors. With this approach, the rate of TRALI after plasma transfusion decreased by about 80%. However, the risk associated with group AB plasma compared to other blood groups did not change, because female donors were still needed for almost half of the group AB plasma to meet demand. Between 2006 and 2011, the use of group AB plasma in the United States steadily increased by over 30%, while plasma use overall decreased by about 3%. To meet the new standard for plasma safety, US blood centres and transfusion services took additional measures to ensure an adequate supply of group AB plasma and appropriate utilization of a limited resource.SummaryThe switch to a male‐donor predominant plasma strategy resulted in a sustained and significant reduction in the risk of TRALI. The collaborative effort of blood centres and transfusion services to further advance evidence‐based haemotherapy practices will likely have a broader effect on transfusion safety than in preventing TRALI alone.

Book Review: The American Red Cross: From Clara Barton to the New Deal by M. M. Jones

Book Review: <i>The American Red Cross: From Clara Barton to the New Deal</i> by M. M. Jones

Keeping Blood Transfusion Safe From West Nile Virus: American Red Cross Experience, 2003 to 2012.

West Nile virus (WNV) appeared for the first time in the United States in 1999 and rapidly spread across the Western hemisphere within a few years causing hundreds of thousands of human infections and significant disease. In 2002, it was found to be transmissible by blood transfusion, and within less than a year, nucleic acid testing for WNV RNA was in place for all US donations. The American Red Cross (ARC) collects approximately 40% of blood donations in the United States and closely monitors the results of such testing and evaluates donors found to be reactive. This review describes the 10-year results of the ARC testing program during the period 2003 to 2012. Overall, more than 27 million donations were tested during the transmission periods with 1576 RNA-positive donations identified. The temporal and geographic distributions of the infected donors are described. Methods to initiate and discontinue periods of individual donation testing were developed and validated to maximize safety. The nature of WNV infection among donors was investigated, and the distribution of viral titers was defined and was found to be no greater than 720000 RNA copies per milliliter. The distribution of titers by time sequence of appearance of antibodies was determined. Donors who were identified as being in the earliest stages of infection were evaluated for the appearance of symptoms, and 26% developed at least 3 characteristic symptoms. The testing program has been successful in preventing transmission of WNV by transfusion, and only 1 of the 13 reported cases since the initiation of testing was attributable to the Red Cross; it was from a granulocyte product transfused before availability of the test result.

Community Partnerships: Teaching Volunteerism, Emergency Preparedness and Awarding Red Cross Certificates in Nursing School Curricula

Natural, manmade disasters and disease outbreaks are an international experience. Effective response to a public health emergency hinges on a well-prepared interdisciplinary team. Yet nursing school faculty are often perplexed about how to best teach these valuable skills. Based on The American Red Cross Student Nurses Education Model, this presentation will review and demonstrate effective methods to improve workforce capacity and core skills. More than 1,000 nursing students from all over the United States took the American Red Cross Pilot Course designed by Dr. Cheryl Schmidt and her colleagues. As the program expands, hundreds, and potentially thousands, of nursing students will be better prepared to serve as disaster volunteers. The program presented in this article is based on Dr. Schmidt's and Nowak's research. It reviews teaching strategies that were evaluated using an experimental design examining disaster preparedness skill formation and partnerships with volunteer disaster relief agencies. Results indicated that students, when taught by a brief integrated format, will effectively learn core disaster nursing skills and enlist in disaster volunteer efforts.

Toward Defining Water Competency: An American Red Cross Definition

Toward Defining Water Competency: An American Red Cross Definition

Toward Defining Water Competency: An American Red Cross Definition

Toward Defining Water Competency: An American Red Cross Definition

Primary and Secondary Drowning Interventions: The American Red Cross Circle of Drowning Prevention and Chain of Drowning Survival

Primary and Secondary Drowning Interventions: The American Red Cross Circle of Drowning Prevention and Chain of Drowning Survival

The Use of Automated External Defibrillators in Infants: A Report From the American Red Cross Scientific Advisory Council.

Automated external defibrillators (AEDs) have been used successfully in many populations to improve survival for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. While ventricular fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia are more prevalent in adults, these arrhythmias do occur in infants. The Scientific Advisory Council of the American Red Cross reviewed the literature on the use of AEDs in infants in order to make recommendations on use in the population. The Cochrane library and PubMed were searched for studies that included AEDs in infants, any external defibrillation in infants, and simulation studies of algorithms used by AEDs on pediatric arrhythmias. There were 4 studies on the accuracy of AEDs in recognizing pediatric arrhythmias. Case reports (n = 2) demonstrated successful use of AED in infants, and a retrospective review (n = 1) of pediatric pads for AEDs included infants. Six studies addressed defibrillation dosages used. The algorithms used by AEDs had high sensitivity and specificity for pediatric arrhythmias and very rarely recommended a shock inappropriately. The energy doses delivered by AEDs were high, although in the range that have been used in out-of-hospital arrest. In addition, there are data to suggest that 2 to 4 J/kg may not be effective defibrillation doses for many children. In the absence of prompt defibrillation for ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia, survival is unlikely. Automated external defibrillators should be used in infants with suspected cardiac arrest, if a manual defibrillator with a trained rescuer is not immediately available. Automated external defibrillators that attenuate the energy dose (eg, via application of pediatric pads) are recommended for infants. If an AED with pediatric pads is not available, the AED with adult pads should be used.