Sylvia Okonofua
Sylvia Okonofua is Founder and Executive Director of Black Donors Save Lives, a federal non profit organization that works to engage Black peoples to donation of blood, stem cells, and organs and tissues. She is also a donor recruiter with Stem Cell Club. In these roles, Sylvia has worked for the past 7 years to overcome unique barriers to donation impacting African, Caribbean, and Black communities in Canada, and advocate for Black patients in need of lifesaving donation products. Through her work with Black Donors Save Lives, she also educates healthcare professionals and students about structural barriers to donation impacting Black peoples, and how the healthcare community can help overcome these critical challenges.
This session will focus on the need for diverse donors across donation products, underrepresentation of racialized and LGBTQ+ donors across donor pools, unique barriers to donation impacting these groups, structural racism and discrimination in donation policy (past and present) which needs to be overcome, and solutions to advance a more inclusive blood and transplant system for donors from underserved/ historically excluded populations (focusing on how partnership with patient/family/donor/community advocates is critical to address disparities). Afterwards, there will be a series of facilitated discussion groups where participants will breakout into small groups to discuss issues highlighted in the presentation. Groups will be given a series of questions to spark discussion. Experts in DEI in donation and transplantation will be invited as facilitators. Finally, the presenters (Dr. Warren Fingrut and Sylvia Okonofua) and the expert facilitators will form a panel, and will invite representatives of each breakout group to share a summary of their learnings for discussion with the panel.
This session is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
Speakers: Sylvia Okonofua, Warren Fingrut
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