In the first episode of Carter BloodCare’s Blood Type: Texan, host Ashley Claster talks with Andrea Sign about how the local blood supply works, why it matters every day and why volunteer blood donors are essential to patient care across North, Central and East Texas.
Welcome to the first episode of Carter BloodCare’s Blood Type: Texan, a podcast that pulls back the curtain on the systems, people and emergencies that keep lifesaving blood moving across Texas.
In this episode, host Ashley Claster is joined by Andrea Sign, Carter BloodCare’s Director of Marketing, Communications and Donor Relations, for a conversation about what Carter BloodCare does, who depends on the blood supply and why volunteer blood donors are essential to patient care across North, Central and East Texas.
Ashley and Andrea discuss what would happen if the blood supply disappeared, why blood cannot be manufactured or stored long term, how Carter BloodCare helps hospitals stay prepared, and why regular blood donations are needed before emergencies happen.
New episodes of Blood Type: Texan are released the first Friday of every month.
To learn more about donating blood or to make an appointment, visit CarterBloodCare.org.
Ashley
Welcome to the very first episode of Carter BloodCare’s Blood Type: Texan, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on the systems, people and emergencies that keep lifesaving blood moving across Texas.
I’m your host, Ashley Claster.
Joining me for our first episode ever of Blood Type: Texan is Andrea Sign, Carter BloodCare’s Director of Marketing, Communications and Donor Relations.
Andrea, thanks for being here and for officially becoming our very first guest.
Andrea
Thank you for having me.
Ashley
Before we talk about Carter BloodCare, let's start bigger. If the blood supply disappeared tomorrow, what would people notice first?
Andrea
Wow. Okay. Starting with the big question. And honestly, not one I ever want to experience. I think the hard truth is, most people probably wouldn't notice right away. Blood is one of those things that's completely out of sight, so out of mind. But health care, they would notice. They’d notice immediately, and so would patients who rely on transfusions.
You'd start to see surgeries canceled or postponed. Trauma care, like car accidents, emergency surgeries, things like that, they would be impacted. Then you think about cancer patients. Most of us know someone who's been through or is going through a cancer journey. Over a quarter of the U.S. blood supply goes to cancer treatment. So think about it. They wouldn't have what they need to help them along in their journey.
Premature babies in the NICU, they would be affected. The truth is, blood and blood products are used not just every day, but every two seconds. So while it may not be visible to most people right away, it would impact our loved ones who depend on it.
Ashley
And specifically, right here in North, Central and East Texas is kind of our local footprint.
Andrea
Absolutely.
Ashley
Yes. All right. So for people who may have heard the name but don't really know what Carter BloodCare does, what is our role in the Texas health care system?
Andrea
So at our core, it's simple. We exist to save lives by making transfusion possible. We're a nonprofit organization and one of the largest blood programs in Texas. Carter BloodCare is the primary blood provider for many health care facilities, like you said, across North, Central and East Texas, including 225 health care facilities across 59 counties. Most people, they see the donation side, but behind that is an entire medical and logistics system.
At Carter BloodCare, we collect, we test, we process, store and deliver blood, making sure that the right products are at the right place at the right time, every single day. We are literally coordinating with health care facilities to keep that system running.
Ashley
And we're talking about your neighbors here. I think one of my favorite expressions lately has been like, if you shop local, you eat local, you should donate blood local. It really is truly helping out your own community. It might be your family members or you that ends up needing it.
Andrea
Yes, the majority of the blood that we collect stays right here in our local community. Now, that's not to say that, you know, if there wasn't a patient that, you know, lived across the country who needed something that only we had, that we wouldn't share and be good stewards, but the majority of it is going to stay right here local.
Ashley
Andrea, you kind of touched on this in the beginning, but who actually relies on Carter BloodCare every day across Texas?
Andrea
So let's talk about some of the medical kind of situations that not everybody thinks about. So mothers with childbirth complications or organ transplant recipients, open-heart surgery patients, burn victims, children going through surgery, patients receiving treatment for blood disorders or patients that have chronic conditions like sickle cell disease, who need frequent transfusions. Most transfusions actually happen in ongoing medical care, not just trauma.
I think most people, you know, they think of an episode of ER or Grey's Anatomy, and it's always those traumas. And it's not always so. Even everyday simple procedures can require a transfusion. A story that was shared with me about a year ago was a little boy who needed his tonsils out, and he had that surgery. And during his healing, he had some complications. And so he needed a transfusion to help him heal. And that's just not something that I even would have thought about as needing blood. But it was a simple surgery that needed it.
Ashley
I think the headline there is nobody is immune from needing blood at any point. Like, you could be the one needing that blood. So why not be the one to donate blood ahead of time and save somebody else's life, right?
Andrea
Yeah. I mean, I wish that people could really grasp that. And it's hard, right? Because none of us want to think about us being in one of those situations. But when we find ourselves in those, we are so grateful and appreciative of the volunteer donor who donated that blood to save our lives.
Ashley
I've worked here a little bit longer than a year. I came from the news business, so I have seen a lot of trauma firsthand and ambulances and stuff. But I learned so much about the whole process when I started working here about a year ago. You have worked in the blood banking business for a long time. What are some things that I guess you weren't aware of or that you got wrong when you first got here, and now you realize the difference?
Andrea
So I've been with Carter BloodCare almost 14 years, and so I got to think back a ways. But I will say, even before I answer this, that I'm still learning and there's just still so many scenarios and things that come up that just shock me.
And to be honest, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I didn't even really give much thought to the blood supply. I didn't even know my blood type until I went through childbirth, and I think that I assumed what a lot of people assume, and that the blood, it's just going to be there when we need it. And that's the furthest from the truth.
I didn't understand that blood had a shelf life or how much even a single patient might need. I also, I guess, didn't realize that blood donations can be disrupted by just weather or holidays. Life gets busy and we forget to take time to do things in our life, right? Sometimes a haircut gets delayed or the oil change gets delayed. And so the same thing happens with, you know, blood donation.
I think the thing that probably was most significant that I got just completely wrong was the idea that the blood supply just runs in the background, you know, by itself. And it doesn't. It takes constant effort, planning and community support. And when I say constant, I mean daily.
Ashley
Well, even just the donors we need daily is at least 1,600 donors just to meet basic hospital needs, what they're basically asking of us every day. And that's not even including a mass trauma situation or something where we really need a large quantity of blood.
Andrea
Correct. Yes. Just to meet the daily standard of care, we need to see 1,600 donors a day. It may not sound like a lot to some, but it is when we compare it to the number of people that are really donating and the fact that our dedicated donors are starting to age. And so now they're becoming patients instead of donors.
And we are so grateful for all of our new donors and our younger donors. But going back to kind of life that I mentioned earlier, it kind of sometimes gets in the way of people donating frequently and on a regular basis. So where we saw maybe donors, the baby boomers, you know, donating six times a year, we maybe only getting two times a year out of donors right now.
Ashley
One thing you said was about the haircut or the oil change. Those are things that you do for yourself that you're going to notice. Donating blood is something you're doing for somebody else. You have to actively make a decision to say, I am going to save one to three people's lives today, and that's why I'm going to make an appointment. It's not like I'm neglecting my responsibilities if I don't get a haircut, right? You have to make a choice to do this.
Andrea
Correct. And I think if people would add it to those routines, right, and just know that, hey, every so many weeks I go for my haircut or every so many miles, I go get my oil changed. So every so many days I need to go donate blood. And we all like to go get our hair cut because when we walk out, we feel good about ourselves and we go strutting out to our car.
Well, think about how good you would feel if you donate, and that strut would be so much different, because you know that you literally just saved somebody's life.
Ashley
Yeah, there's a lot of things where you could wear a color for a specific cause or do a social media challenge, but this is something you can actively wake up in the morning, make a physical difference, help somebody in your community. I mean, that's a really wonderful opportunity, if you think about it, to be able to be a hero and decide to be that when you wake up.
Andrea
I don't know. I mean, probably not much better feeling than to know that you saved a life.
Ashley
All right. We are about to have a big soccer tournament here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Millions of visitors are coming here from out of state, out of country, far away. We're going to have an influx of traffic, which means an influx of trauma and potential for other blood needs. So how has Carter BloodCare been prepping and how can people listening right now help us prepare before that soccer tournament?
Andrea
I don't know what you're talking about. No, just kidding. How could anybody not know that we're about to have this huge international soccer tournament here? It is definitely the talk of the town and has been the talk of medical facilities, including Carter BloodCare, for a while now. And it is because we do have to prepare. And when you have as many people going to be in our area, like you were saying, you have the increase for needs and the demand.
So right now we really, really, really need to be building up our blood supply. Red cells are good for 42 days, so the blood that's donated right now will be good for, you know, right around that time that the World Cup is starting. So we need to have good supply. And it is for those unexpected situations, right? So whether something big were to happen at one of the matches or, you know, big auto accident or something like that, that we would have the blood available because truly it's the blood on the shelf that's going to save lives.
Ashley
That's important because I think a lot of people, after something happens, will line up to donate blood. But what's going to matter in those moments, in those minutes and hours after, is what was donated before, right? How do you make people understand that?
Andrea
Correct. It's hard because, again, like people don't tend to think or want to think about the what-ifs, but that's our job to think about the what-ifs and to prepare and to plan. And so that's why, like in the month of May, we're trying to host a lot of blood drives, and we're getting communication out to encourage people to come in to one of our 27 donor centers to donate, to help us build up.
And all we can do is talk about it. And, you know, just like people tend to plan for, let's say, maybe a big hurricane, right, is projected to make landfall. Well, those that are in its path are going to plan. They're going to prepare, they're going to board up their windows. They're going to maybe put sandbags out so the houses don't flood. Whatever it is that they need to do, they're going to prepare.
Well, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to board things up. We're trying to put those sandbags down. So just in case, we are prepared and ready to help anybody who needs it. So I encourage anybody who is eligible, and even if you don't think you're eligible, I would encourage you to come in or even call and find out, because there's a lot of misconceptions about eligibility, and a lot of people think that they can't donate for this reason or that, when really they can.
Ashley
And if you have friends who are type O blood, we want you to encourage them to come out and donate right now, because O negative and O positive are really the two essential blood types during an emergency situation.
Andrea
Yes, your universal type, right, that can go to any patient. But O positive can go to the majority of patients as well without any issues. So I think right now our industry would love to have seven days’ worth of blood on the shelf before any of the big matches. And we have, I believe, nine of them in our area during June and July.
So we need to have seven days’ supply on the shelf for all nine of those matches. But even, you know, in Dallas, they're hosting events and there's a bunch going on in the cities surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth outside of those key matches. But we still need to have the blood available just in case something were to happen.
Ashley
Let's talk about why the public rarely thinks about it. Blood donation is something most people don't think about until there's a shortage and we're on the news saying, please come donate. There's a shortage. Why is the blood supply so invisible to the public most of the time?
Andrea
Great question. I think because when it works, it works and you don't see it. Hospitals and blood centers, we work very hard to maintain supply levels so that doctors and patients, that they don't have to think about whether the blood is going to be available. Most patients receiving transfusions, they're never going to meet the donor who helped them. So the connection between the two stays invisible.
People, like you said, they only hear about it when there's a shortage or when something major has happened to disrupt donations, or that causes an influx of donors. In many ways, the invisibility is actually a sign that the system is functioning. But to keep it functioning, we have to see 1,600 donors a day. So that invisibility, it can create a challenge, because people may not realize that the supply depends entirely on local volunteer donors continuing to show up.
Ashley
Our department is the one that goes on the news and asks people watching to donate if there's a shortage. Why does Carter BloodCare spend time communicating with the public, the media, and the community about blood donation instead of just focusing on hospital supply behind the scenes?
Andrea
From time to time, you know, I hear that donor who's like, stop calling me, or I'm sick of the emails or the text messages. And to be honest, I am too. I wish we didn't have to send out as much communication, and we wouldn't have to if those 1,600 donors would show up every day.
The blood supply only exists if people donate. It can't be manufactured or stored long term, so community participation is essential. You know, earlier I mentioned, you know, that we had seen a decline of the number of people donating and the frequency of which they donate. So again, this is requiring us to constantly communicate and recruit new donors.
I wish people could understand that every day people are having their own personal, critical situations. So our community shows up when something big, and we are grateful for that. But if you can think about the patients having their own big critical situation and showing up for them on a daily basis, I think that it would change the way that people donate, how often they donate.
And we don't, we're not going to see those many crises in the media, but that doesn't mean that those families don't feel it the same. I don't feel so bad sending those emails, those text messages, making those phone calls, going on media, because I don't want to be the person that has to look a family in the face and tell them, I'm sorry, there's not blood available for your child today.
Ashley
And that's just not metaphorical, that doctors really have to make a decision if there's not enough blood to postpone people's surgeries or who to give the blood to, right? That's not even us. That's on the hospital side. They are actually making decisions, if we don't have enough donors, who to help.
Andrea
Yes, they absolutely do. They have to make those and they will have to postpone. It's even more so, you know, for the blood types that aren't as common. And so it's harder to make sure that we have that supply there or to get that match. So it's important. Don't think, oh, you have enough of my blood type, or oh, somebody else is going to donate, so I don't have to. We need you.
Ashley
So if we're sending you that text message or that email, it's because we need your specific blood type, not just because we wanted to check in and say hi. It's because we need you.
Andrea
Exactly.
Ashley
The community needs you. And it's not just an unnamed patient. It could be your neighbor. I think that's what's so important about Carter BloodCare is that we focus on Texans.
Andrea
It could be your best friend. It could be any of your family members, or it could be for yourself.
Ashley
So while we're on the subject of marketing, there are a lot of ways that Carter BloodCare could communicate with the public. Why are we starting a podcast right now?
Andrea
I guess we want to be a part of the trend, right? But no. On a serious note, I think this podcast allows us to have those deeper conversations and provide more transparency. Those short forms of communication can be hard to really get the message across. And I also think people are hungry for education. If we can, you know, bring them the information that they're hungry for and also provide different viewpoints, whether that be, you know, medical professionals or our hospital partners, researchers and even patients to provide that, I think that would be neat to hear of different points of view.
Many people haven't even heard how the blood supply really functions. So I would love to be able to provide that insight in almost that behind-the-scenes look. I think the podcast is going to allow us to tell stories in ways that's educational but accessible, right? To give that visual, even though it's through words, I think we can paint that picture.
And yeah, I just hope that we can provide that deeper conversation, that inside look, and just maybe those answers to questions that people have been curious about.
Ashley
Maybe once people are educated about this, hopefully through our podcast, we'll get more donors in the end, or maybe younger donors, because as you said, the older donors are not only aging out of being a donor, but becoming recipients themselves. And so one of our main goals is to get younger donors in our doors. I think that's a really good reason for this podcast is to reach those younger donors.
Andrea
Oh, I agree. I agree 100%. I think for me that's the byproduct, right, of it all. And to not necessarily make that ask during this podcast, but provide the education that allows people to come to their own conclusion of that's what they need to do, is to step up and donate locally with Carter BloodCare so it stays local.
Ashley
What kinds of conversations or topics are you hoping this podcast will help people better understand about blood donation and the blood supply here in Texas?
Andrea
There's really so much. I mean, we could have so many episodes. I mean, like I said earlier, being here 14 years and I'm still learning, so there's not going to be a lack of opportunity for podcast topics. But some of the ones that come to mind is, of course, how blood donation supports patient care across different situations.
I think just general education on blood types and products, eligibility and the process. I think there is stuff we could talk about when it comes to the science behind blood collection and the testing and the processing and the storing of it. I also think the logistics required to move blood from donors to hospitals safely, or maybe even, you know, inviting some of our hospital partners to give insight on how we work together to manage the supply and demand, and then maybe even talking about challenges that can disrupt the donations like weather events, holidays, seasonal trends that maybe people aren't aware of or that we need to give more insight into, and ultimately the role that the community plays in sustaining the health care system.
Ashley
I think one of my personal goals as host is helping people understand that blood donation is a charitable act, but it's not just a charitable act. It is a critical part of our health care infrastructure that relies on community volunteers.
Andrea
Yeah, I mean, that's an excellent, excellent point. I think that if people would realize that the health care system relies on blood and blood products, if you think about everything that goes on in those facilities and how much couldn't happen if it wasn't for the blood supply, then I think that would really impact our donations.
Ashley
When people hear blood bank, they might imagine a large reserve somewhere. In reality, it's Carter BloodCare for North, Central and East Texas. And in reality, how close are we most days to running out?
Andrea
Yeah, bank is probably the wrong word to go with what we do, but we're probably closer than what people think. Most blood centers operate with only a few days’ supply available at any given time, because blood products, again, have those short shelf lives. It's impossible to build a large, long-term reserve.
Red cells, they're only good for 42 days. Platelets are good for almost seven days. That means that as soon as donations are collected, they're coming back, they're being tested, and then they're often used very quickly by hospitals. The system is designed to keep the blood moving from donors to patients continuously. But when donations drop for several days in a row, the supply can drop quickly. I've seen it where we've had maybe a three-day supply available, and then overnight it drops to less than a day. It doesn't take much. So that's why the regular donations are so important to keep hospitals prepared.
Ashley
When we talk about the shelf life of blood and blood products, it's like milk in that it expires. You can't just collect it and have this massive closet full of blood ready to go. It expires. We have to keep it fresh.
Andrea
Correct. I don't know, fortunate, unfortunate. Most of ours doesn't expire because it's being used. Carter takes pride in being a good steward of the blood supply and trying to use every donation that we receive, and it's not too hard to do because, again, like, there's just never, never enough. And so that situation of expiring just doesn't happen very often.
But yes, it's going out the door and it can only be available for so many days.
Ashley
Andrea, thank you so much for being our very first guest on Carter BloodCare’s Blood Type: Texan.
For everyone listening, if this episode made you think a little differently about donating blood, that’s exactly why we’re here.
To learn more about donating blood or to make an appointment, visit CarterBloodCare.org.
I’m Ashley Claster. Thanks for listening to the first episode of Carter BloodCare’s Blood Type: Texan. We’ll see you next time.