Top Paper Award DCHC goes to Lisa Klinkenberg, Julia van Weert and team.

Published on May 25th 2019 – During the D.C. Health Communication conference held on the 26th and 27th of April 2019, Lisa Klinkenberg and her coauthors, from which Julia van Weert, received the Top Paper Award for their study entitled: ‘Unknown makes Unloved: Blood donation awareness and attitudes among people of White majority and African minority background’.

Their study showed that African migrants are less aware of blood donation than Dutch individuals, and they also perceive donating blood as less important and useful. However, a high awareness of blood donation was associated with a higher attitude towards blood donation among the African migrants, while no association was found among the Dutch group.

Lisa Klinkenberg conducts her PhD-research at Sanquin (the Dutch blood bank organisation) and the Amsterdam UMC. In het PhD-project she studies blood donation barriers and motivators among migrants with an African background, to finally develop an intervention to recruit and retain this target population as blood donors. Julia van Weert is one of her supervisors on this project.