This project is the product of a partnership with the NGO Safe Blood for Africa (SBFA) and Brown University as a component of research consisting of a social anthropological analysis of blood safety and sustainability. This searchable digital database contains an array of Safe Blood for Africa documents generated to fulfill the organization’s mission “to facilitate capacity building of African Blood Services to deliver adequate, accessible and affordable Safe Blood through appropriate best practices (based on the World Health Organization's strategy for global blood safety).”
The main objective of the database is to enable other blood services, transfusion-focused organizations, and researchers from a wide variety of disciplines to easily access and utilize these SBFA documents, whether to adapt them for their own purposes, or analyze their content to improve and re-conceptualize various aspects of safety, management, training, and the like. In addition to preserving these documents for posterity, the database also serves as an example of the possibilities for collaboration among social anthropologists, information science experts, and blood transfusion practitioners and researchers.
The project is funded by the Fulbright IIE and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) DDRI Grant NSF#1658374. The database includes General database information and guidelines, SOPs for use in across blood services operations, Training Materials (slides and instruction manuals), Multimedia (photos and video of SBFA projects). SBFA has received funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Center for Global Health (CGH) Project #GH000869 (2012-2016) and National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP) Projects #PS002993 (2010-2015) and #PS324046 (2004-2010).
Project Team members:
Emily Avera, PhD (Co-Principal Investigator, Department of Anthropology, Brown University)
Ingrid Corbett (Office Manager, Safe Blood for Africa)
Pete Zacharias (Chief Operations Officer, Safe Blood for Africa)
Andrew Creamer (Research Data Management, Brown University Library)