Club Nursing, Nursing's undergraduate student organization, and the Elon football program, joined forces for the first annual Be the Match Event to promote bone marrow donation.
On Wednesday, April 24, volunteer members from Club Nursing, nursing’s undergraduate student organization which is open to all Elon students, and members of the Elon Football program joined together to support bone marrow donation.
With two stations on main campus and one in the School of Health Sciences, volunteers worked to spread the news of Be The Match: The National Bone Marrow (NMDP) registry program. NMDP is a national nonprofit agency whose mission is to share awareness of the need for bone marrow donation and to increase the number of participants in the registery. Armed with the knowledge that someone in the United States is diagnosed with a blood cancer every 3 to 4 minutes, 70% of patients don’t have a family member match and more than 75 diseases can be cured or treated with blood stem cells, the effort gathered over 300 samples from Elon students to add to the national registry for matching.
This event marks the first philanthropic activity for Club Nursing. Watch for more social and civic engagement opportunities to come.
Special thanks to Amanda Cooley and Cavin Villarreal from NMDP, club nursing executive board especially President Amanda Jacobson and Vice-President, Taylor Capello, the Department of Nursing for financial support and the faculty and staff advisers for the football and nursing program.