Hi everyone,

Our group will be sharing about the Bone Marrow Donor Programme (BMDP) in Singapore for the Social Media Research Project.

Blood marrow is found within the hollow spaces of our major bones and is responsible for blood cell production. For blood cancer patients, the bone marrow is not capable of producing healthy blood cells or the right combination of blood cells. This is where the Bone Marrow Donor Programme (BMDP) comes in to support our community since its establishment 22 years ago. Aside from their vision to provide hope to patients with blood-related diseases, BMDP is a non-profit organisation responsible for building and managing Singapore’s only register of volunteer donors who are willing to donate their bone marrow to save the lives of patients with leukaemia and other blood diseases and who need a transplant to survive. The BMDP also provides a 365-day service to the hospitals to search the local register and, if necessary, extend this around the world in order to find a matching donor for their patients.

Every day, 6 people in Singapore are diagnosed with blood cancer and a blood marrow transplant may be their only chance of survival. However, the odds of finding a donor with a matching DNA profile is only 1 in 20,000. Currently, approximately 80% of bone marrow donation requests in Singapore remain unanswered and the chance of locating a match is lower for some of the ethnic groups.

Given the shared context, our group aims to address the following research question: How can BMDP use social media to influence different levels of action intent? We will be focusing on BMDP’s key content channels with both qualitative and quantitative data analysis as well as contrasting them against similar industry players such as the Red Cross Society Singapore to seek insights on how BMDP can better leverage on social media to expand on their outreach efforts.

We aim to propose solutions that improve content curation on the identified social media platforms in order to promote organization salience and improve public knowledge and perception towards bone marrow donation. Further, by encouraging increased interactivity between BMDP and the public, we hope that this contributes to the ultimate goal of increases in both physical and monetary donations as well as the creation of sustainable community networks.

Yours truly,

Amelia Koh, Clara Chiang, Eugene Koh, Florence Pau, Yan Chongxi (Chelsea)