GUEST POST: Hawaii Cord Blood Bank – Sharing the Gift of Life

​The Hawaii Cord Blood Bank (HCBB) is an independent, non-profit community service organization which began operations in 1998 as a means to help the challenge of finding donors for Hawaii’s ethnically diverse patient population.

A growing proportion of Hawaii’s population is comprised of people from multiple race/mixed ethnicity backgrounds.

According to the 2010 census, there has been a 32% increase in the multiple race segment of our population over the last decade, and Hawaii leads this national trend with 23% of the State’s population reporting two or more races.
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This becomes a challenge when patients from Hawaii are searching for a matching bone marrow or stem cell donor since the majority of donors in our national registry are Caucasian, while donors from minorities (African American, Asian, Pacific Islanders) are underrepresented.

Mixed race patients may have inherited a tissue type that is common in one of their parent’s ethnic group, and another tissue type that is common in the other parent’s ethnic group. The combination of these two common types is often uncommon.

The diversity of Hawaii’s population is the main reason Hawaii patients needing stem cell transplants have an especially difficult time finding matching donors.

Although founded to serve the people of Hawaii to fill the critical need for cord blood from multi-ethnic donors, HCBB has also proven to be a valuable resource for patients of Asian, Polynesian, or mixed ethnicity worldwide.

The Hawaii Cord Blood Bank is addressing an important need through its umbilical cord blood banking efforts, which help to increase access to transplant for minority patients in Hawaii and throughout the world.

Thanks to the hard work and devotion of hundreds of doctors and nurses who volunteer their time on our behalf, we offer cord blood donations at all five birthing hospitals on Oahu at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children, The Queens Medical Center, Tripler Army Medical Center, and Castle Medical Center as well as on Maui at the Maui Memorial Medical Center.

​Our cord blood units are sent to our partners at Bloodworks Northwest in Seattle for processing and storage. Cord blood units collected by the Hawaii Cord Blood Bank are listed with the National Marrow Donor Program’s network of cord blood banks.
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HCBB is a small organization, yet we have collected over 10,000 units and stored over 3,000 cord blood units of which approximately 87% of our cord blood units collected are from minority or multi-ethnic donors.

Proud team at Hawai‘i Cord Blood Bank (left to right): Dr. Randal Wada, President and Medical Director, ​Charis Ober from Save the Cord Foundation, Linda Watanabe, Administrative Manager, Lynette Matsumoto, Program Coordinator, Allison Sears, Donor Coordinator, Lisa Wong-Yamamoto, Nurse Educator.

Hawaii’s unique racial demographics make Hawaii Cord Blood Bank a national model for a system of cord blood collection and banking that is truly capable of reflecting the full spectrum of ethnic diversity within the population it seeks to serve.

Donor Maribeth Toledo‐ Cabuslay with Baby Ryan and Nurse Educator Lisa Wong‐Yamamoto, RNC as they wait to be interviewed by Hawai’i News Now newscasters

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​We wish to thank the team at Hawaii Cord Blood Bank for this wonderful guest post and for the noble work they do everyday collecting cord blood and helping patients worldwide who are desperately waiting for a stem cell donor. You can learn more about the Hawaii Cord Blood Bank here.