At the Blood Center, we have a variety of job descriptions. Our newest is matchmaker.

With the Perfect Match Program, Puget 9 Sound Blood Center meets a medical need head-on. In 2000, Western Washington physicians cited a critical shortage of perfectly-matched blood – donated blood matched exactly to patients’ blood, beyond mere typing. Such matches are required for patients who receive transfusions often, as in sickle-cell anemia cases.

Seattle Police Sergeant Randy Yamanaka encourages our communities of color to be blood donors, benefiting patients such as Taiana Smith who require monthly blood transfusions.

Blood Center medical staff listened. The blood supply did need more diversity. The question was how to achieve it. With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the answer was to create the Rare Blood Donor Program to raise awareness of the need for donors of color. Within four years, the “rare donor” base had quadrupled, and many lives have been saved.

But that’s not enough. A task force led by long-time Blood Center supporter and former Washington State Governor Gary Locke is exploring the best ways to recruit donors for diversity, and is setting the stage to establish the first genomic testing program for all donors. Such testing will enable all blood centers to find better matches for ethnically diverse patients who have chronic transfusion needs.

Through personal experience of saving a life, Seattle Police Sergeant Randy Yamanaka has become the Perfect Match Program’s #1 ambassador, sharing the information with our communities.

Now 14, Taiana (far left) was born with sickle cell disease, characterized by misshapen red blood cells that clump together to clog veins and arteries, and damage joints and organs. Her mother, Karen Smith, is a nurse who knows what Taiana and other patients go through. "There's no cure for sickle cell now," she notes. "But transfusions keep Taiana going; they're essential to her life." Every four weeks, Taiana has 85 percent of her blood exchanged through transfusions.