The AMSA Vampire Cup Blood Donation Challenge – Australia (AMSA)

Name of the activity: The AMSA Vampire Cup Blood Donation Challenge

Country/NMO: Australia (AMSA)

Program: Organ, Marrow & Tissue Donation

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Campaign

Focus area:

Blood donation

Problem statement:

The AMSA Vampire Cup has been running annually for 11 years to increase blood stocks in the critical Winter period. It acts as an educational and promotional campaign to increase both blood donations and awareness of the importance of blood donation.

Target groups and beneficiaries:

All Australian Medical Societies (22 in total) who will in turn target their medical students and the families and friends of medical students. The public overall will benefit from this initiative through increased blood donations in the community.

Objectives and indicators of success:

(1) To increase awareness about the importance of blood donation
(2) To increase blood donation numbers in Australia
(3) To promote medical students to continue to donate blood, if able, on a regular basis
(4) To facilitate medical students promoting blood donation to other members of the community (e.g. family, friends, proxy donations)
(5) Create a positive social media culture encouraging blood donation with a constructive competitive aspect

Methodology:

Vampire Cup is run by a national team of 1 to 3 members of AMSA who then coordinate 22 University Vampire Cup Representatives who each run their local university campaigns. The competition is largely run on social media with regular updates on the donation tally board and promotional aspects to highlight the importance of blood donation. There are annual major prizes for winning universities.

Plans for evaluation:

Overall donation numbers is the key indicator annually, with each successive year since 2008 Vampire Cup has increased it’s overall total donations from 400 in 2008 to 2393 in 2017.