GOOD

Russel

Articles

Backstage Passes for Blood Donation: Saving Lives Never Sounded So Good

Music Saves Lives is helping the national blood supply by encouraging youth to donate blood at rock concerts around the country.

Our lives are filled with traffic, shopping, school, work, and all the family stuff in between. We barely have time to think about how the milk gets into the gallon jug, or how they mix the gas and get it to the gas stations and we never think about how the hospitals have the emergency supplies ready and waiting. Our lives are busy, but a health issue requiring a blood transfusion will someday affect every one of us. It might not be you, personally, but it will be friend or family member. You may not be able to control the way milk gets to the grocery store, or how gas is formulated to work in your car, but you have the power to #GiveBlood and make a difference in the lives of those that need a transplant, or have cancer, or have been in a traumatic situation.

Seven years ago I set out to change a national problem that many people didn’t know about. Every summer hospitals all over the U.S. are put on notice that the blood supply is below what is needed to keep them with ample supplies. The reason this happens in the summer is that almost 30 percent of all blood donations come from College and High School blood drives. Summer rolls around and students are on vacation. I needed to find a way to change the attitude about blood donation and that it wasn’t just something kids could do while in school. I needed to connect it to a lifestyle that every young person could relate to. I needed to find a way that music—one of the most common links in every kid’s world—could save lives.

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