A Partnership to ENROLL IOWA Our goal was to support a national initiative to increase the number of registered donors nationally by 20 million in 2012 utilizing the Workplace for Partnership format and tools. The program was launched in April 2012 to piggyback on Donate Life Month. Our planning work, however, started long before the launch. It really began back in 2010 when we named two Iowa Hospital Association representatives to our Board of Directors and to our Medical Advisory Committee at Iowa Donor Network. This act alone, cemented a collaborative relationship with the IHA. In November 2011, we began our work with our IHA representatives. We established our goals and our representatives were able to get us on the agenda of every regional meeting they hold with Hospital CEOs. This was an important venue for us because IHA has a 95% success rate in getting all hospital CEOs to attend. It was at those meetings that we covered the goals established by the Iowa Hospital Association and Iowa Donor Network for the success of the campaign.

We utilized all of the tools and graphics that were provided to us from HRSA. We made CDs for every hospital so they could have the tools and graphics at their finger tips. We provided each hospital with a Donate Life Flag, The Letter format from Hospital CEOs to other leaders in their community The e-mail format from hospital leaders to their staff Donation fact sheets Graphics for posters, web banners tent cards. Sample news releases and newsletter stories Public Service announcements It was decided that IHA and IDN would jointly provide support during the campaign month to each hospital as needed. The requests went to IHA and were shared with IDN.

75% of all Iowa hospitals will fly the Donate Life Flag in April of 2012 Goals: 75% of all Iowa hospitals will fly the Donate Life Flag in April of 2012. 2011 – only 48% of our hospitals flew the flag. We did fall short of our goal 68% of hospitals flew the flag, a 20% increase! Many hospitals continued to fly the flag and have not taken it down.

75% of all Iowa hospitals will participate in the Give 5, Save Lives challenge Goals: 75% of all Iowa hospitals will participate in the Take 5, Save Lives challenge The Give 5 – Save Lives campaign strategy is simple. Hospital CEOs for one week allow every employee the first five minutes of their workday to register as organ and tissue donors on the Iowa Donor Registry. Almost 70% success rate

IHA ran monthly articles/posts January –April 2012 to highlight organ donation issues Goals: IHA will run monthly articles/posts Jan-April of 2012 to highlight organ donation issues. 

Iowa hospitals will increase registrations by a number equaling 10% of your total employee pool. Goals: Iowa hospitals will increase registration by a number equaling 10% of your total employee pool. Example: if you have 100 employees, you would have 10 people registering in honor of your hospital. As expected some hospitals did better than others. We had a 7% increase in registrations.

What has happened since…

Produce 3 15-minute educational videos that will be available “on demand” through the IHA website. Invited to: Produce 3 - 15 minute video updates for hospital administrators, staff, and trustees to educate them on targeted aspects of organ donation that will be available “on demand” through the IHA website.

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Challenges: Our biggest challenges were tracking our results. We allowed for space on the registry for people to register in honor of the hospital where they worked. However, it was not a required field. We know we probably did better with registration results, but can’t prove it.

Best Practices: Board and MAC involvement with our organization. We started with our contacts knowing the ins and outs of IDN and donor registrations so we didn’t have to spend a lot of time “teaching” or convincing people of the need and what we were trying to accomplish. We didn’t recreate the wheel. We used the materials (past and current) that HRSA has made available to us through the Workplace Partnership for Life. We started early and sought input with regards to our goals. Make sure you share stories, press releases, etc. with associations press contact.