Every year, thousand of people are diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses, and their best – or only – hope for a cure is a transplant from an unrelated bone marrow or blood stem cell donor. Since tissue type is inherited, a patient's best chance of finding a suitably matched donor lies with those of similar ethnic ancestry. Unfortunately, the worldwide donor pool is not representative of all ethnic and racial groups.
For a transplant to work, the donor's and recipient's tissue types must match. These are inherited, like hair and eye color, so genetic heritage is often a good predictor of matches. Yet many demographic groups have low representation in the registries, leaving some patients with little possibility of a livesaving transplant. Increasing the registry's diversity is an urgent need in order to save more lives.
75% of African American/Black and Multiracial blood cancer patients will never find a lifesaving donor.1
55% of Hispanic/Latino blood cancer patients will not survive due to the lack of a lifesaving donor in the registry. These communities have the highest rates of developing acute lymphocytic leukemia.2
The difficulty of finding matching marrow donors is due to the low number of diverse ethnic groups in the worldwide registry.3
Since 2010, RSM employees have taken time away from the office to help others through a coordinated firm-wide Volunteer Day. RSM’s day of giving back has grown so much that in 2019, the firm decided to expand it to an entire week to maximize the volunteer impact on our communities. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, RSM Volunteer Week took a different shape in 2020. As in-person volunteering events were not possible, RSM committed to two months of virtual volunteering.
While RSM’s people regularly give back to their local communities, RSM Volunteer Week represents part of our firm’s commitment to the communities where our people work and live.