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Company type | Nonprofit |
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Industry | Healthcare |
Headquarters | 1400 La Concha Lane, , U.S. |
Area served | Texas Gulf Coast, Brazos Valley and East Texas |
Products | Whole blood and blood components |
Website | www.giveblood.org |
Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center serves as the sole continuous provider of blood to Houston and its surrounding communities. It is one of the largest independent community blood centers in the United States serving 26 counties from the Texas Gulf Coast to Brazos Valley to East Texas. [1] The nonprofit supplies blood to more than 170 hospitals and health care institutions including the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical center in the world. Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center is a proud member of the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), Blood Centers of America, South Central Association of Blood Banks, Texas Medical Center and America's Blood Centers. Operations started on January 1, 1975, with 64 employees. Today, Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center has over 650 staff members. The overall supervision of Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center's activities is the responsibility of a chief executive officer appointed by the board of trustees. Medical supervision and direction for Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center are provided by a Chief Medical Officer also appointed by the board of trustees.
Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center's mission is to partner with the community to help save and sustain lives by providing a safe supply of blood, biotherapies, and related services. There is no substitute for blood. It must be voluntarily donated by one person to be given to another. The need for different blood components–red blood cells, platelets, and plasma–is constant. Donating on an ongoing basis helps ensure blood components are always available for the patients we serve. As a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit, the patients and donors served are at the heart of everything. Every donor is a hero to the families they impact each time they give blood.
To meet the blood demands in the community, Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center needs about 1,000 donations a day, and all blood donors in the U.S. must be unpaid volunteers. Those units of blood are a vital lifeline for Houston's health care industry and are used in surgeries, cancer treatments and various medical procedures. That is why Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center asks community members to Commit for Life, a partnership between the community and Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center, focused on saving lives today, and in the future.
Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center is a leading supplier of blood, blood components and related services to fulfill a variety of client's needs. Not just in the Texas Gulf Coast, but worldwide. Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center is accredited, licensed and inspected by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) and local and state authorities.
Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center supplies a full range of transfusable products, including special order blood components. It produces products that are selected for specific properties and used for essential research, as well as further manufacturing into blood derivatives and pharmaceuticals.
National Donor Testing Services Laboratory is used 24/7/365 for accurate and rapid detection and confirmation of a variety of infectious and viral disease markers. It is used for ABO/Rh and the detection of antibodies to red cell antigens too. The AABB-accredited Immunohematology Reference Laboratory provides transfusion services and consultation on complex patient cases. Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center maintains a large volume of antigen-typed red cell units, with additional access to rare units through the American Rare Donor Program.
Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center maintains a variety of programs with and for the community, providing exciting opportunities for all to save lives. The Blood Center offers promotion drives throughout the year as a thank you to our donors for giving blood and offer donor rewards. Programs at Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center:
Commit for Life- Every donor becomes a part of the Commit for Life program, a partnership between the donor and Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center. Giving on an ongoing basis helps ensure blood components are always available for patients in the Houston area, Brazos Valley and East Texas. Commit for Life donor rewards program is one small way Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center thanks each donor that helps save lives. Volunteers can become part of the Commit for Life program too. Donors and volunteers will get points that can be redeemed for e-gift cards in the Donor Rewards Store.
BioLinked - More than 16,000 clinical studies are occurring at any one time in the United States. These studies could provide cures or treatments for diseases that affect our friends and neighbors. This progress is often delayed for many years because scientists cannot locate people to participate in their research. By helping researchers locate willing participants, we are doing our part in bringing new hope to patients. Bio-Linked is an electronic roster of people willing to help researchers find cures and treatments. You submit a confidential, self-managed profile of only the medical and social information you are willing to offer. This allows us to find people who meet research needs anonymously.
Milestone Mug-Celebrating milestones with the Milestone Mug program. Donors earn special mugs for each 1,5,10,15 and 20-gallon donations. Afterward, donors will get a mug for every 10-gallons given.
Cellular Life Solutions-Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center has over 44 years of industry experience in serving the largest medical campus in the world. Cellular Life Solutions is Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center's innovative program to expand work in the field of cellular therapy. Cell-based immunotherapy is currently at the forefront in the development of new treatments for serious diseases.
Friends of the Blood Center-A community partner program at Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center. Local businesses and organizations offer perks and incentives to donors for donating blood.
Transfusion medicine is the branch of medicine that encompasses all aspects of the transfusion of blood and blood components including aspects related to hemovigilance. It includes issues of blood donation, immunohematology and other laboratory testing for transfusion-transmitted diseases, management and monitoring of clinical transfusion practices, patient blood management, therapeutic apheresis, stem cell collections, cellular therapy, and coagulation. Laboratory management and understanding of state and federal regulations related to blood products are also a large part of the field.
A blood donation occurs when a person voluntarily has blood drawn and used for transfusions and/or made into biopharmaceutical medications by a process called fractionation. Donation may be of whole blood, or of specific components directly (apheresis). Blood banks often participate in the collection process as well as the procedures that follow it.
AABB is an international, not-for-profit organization representing individuals and institutions involved in the field of transfusion medicine and biotherapies.
A cord blood bank is a facility which stores umbilical cord blood for future use. Both private and public cord blood banks have developed in response to the potential for cord blood in treating diseases of the blood and immune systems. Public cord blood banks accept donations to be used for anyone in need, and as such function like public blood banks. Traditionally, public cord blood banking has been more widely accepted by the medical community. Private cord blood banks store cord blood solely for potential use by the donor or donor's family. Private banks typically charge around $2,000 for the collection and around $200 a year for storage.
Intraoperative blood salvage (IOS), also known as cell salvage, is a specific type of autologous blood transfusion. Specifically IOS is a medical procedure involving recovering blood lost during surgery and re-infusing it into the patient. It is a major form of autotransfusion.
Transfusion-associated graft-versus-host disease (TA-GvHD) is a rare complication of blood transfusion, in which the immunologically competent donor T lymphocytes mount an immune response against the recipient's lymphoid tissue. These donor lymphocytes engraft, recognize recipient cells as foreign and mount an immune response against recipient tissues. Donor lymphocytes are usually identified as foreign and destroyed by the recipient's immune system. However, in situations where the recipient is severely immunocompromised, or when the donor and recipient HLA type is similar, the recipient's immune system is not able to destroy the donor lymphocytes. This can result in transfusion associated graft-versus-host disease. This is in contrast with organ/tissue transplant associated GvHD, where matching HLA reduces the incident of the complication.
The New York Blood Center (NYBC) is a community, nonprofit blood bank based in New York City. Established in 1964 by Dr. Aaron Kellner, NYBC supplies blood to approximately 200 hospitals in the Northeast United States. NYBC and its operating divisions also provide transfusion-related medical services to over 500 hospitals nationally.
Packed red blood cells, also known as packed cells, are red blood cells that have been separated for blood transfusion. The packed cells are typically used in anemia that is either causing symptoms or when the hemoglobin is less than usually 70–80 g/L. In adults, one unit brings up hemoglobin levels by about 10 g/L. Repeated transfusions may be required in people receiving cancer chemotherapy or who have hemoglobin disorders. Cross-matching is typically required before the blood is given. It is given by injection into a vein.
The New Zealand Blood Service is the provider of blood services for New Zealand. The service is a Crown entity responsible to New Zealand's Parliament and is governed by a Board appointed by the Minister of Health.
Founded in 1962, America's Blood Centers (ABC) is an association of independent non-profit blood centers that operates in Canada and the United States. ABC member organizations operate more than 600 blood collection sites providing close to 60 percent of the U.S., and a quarter of the Canadian, blood supply. These blood centers serve more than 150 million people and provide blood products and services to more than 3,500 hospitals and healthcare facilities across North America. All ABC U.S. members are licensed and regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Kate Fry, MBA, CAE, currently leads the organization as Chief Executive Officer.
Patient Blood Management (PBM) is a set of medical practices designed to optimise the care of patients who might need a blood transfusion. Patient blood management programs use an organized framework to improve blood health, thus increasing patient safety and quality of life, reducing costs, and improving clinical outcomes. Some strategies to accomplish this include ensuring that anemia is treated prior to a surgical operation, using surgical techniques that limit blood loss, and returning blood lost during surgery to the patient via intraoperative blood salvage.
The Gift of Life Marrow Registry is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 and headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida that operates a public blood stem cell and bone marrow registry while facilitating transplants for children and adults battling life-threatening illnesses, including leukemia, lymphoma, other cancers and genetic diseases.
Carter BloodCare is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in Bedford, Texas. Carter BloodCare currently provides more than 440,000 blood products annually to over 200 hospitals serving patients in more than 50 counties across North, Central and East Texas. One of the largest blood centers in operation in the United States, Carter BloodCare’s mission is “we save lives by making transfusion possible.”.
Blood donation in Bangladesh is an activity conducted by several different organisations. As of 2011, about 25% of the nation's blood supply came from voluntary donation, 20–25% from paid donors, and 50–55% from one-time donation for a specific patient.
Bloodworks Northwest is a blood bank and medical research institute headquartered in Seattle, Washington, that serves 90 hospitals in western Washington and Oregon. It has formerly been known as the Puget Sound Blood Center and King County Central Blood Bank.
Young blood transfusion refers to transfusing blood specifically from a young person into an older one with the intention of creating a health benefit. The scientific community currently views the practice as essentially pseudoscientific, with comparisons to snake oil. There are also concerns of harm. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in 2019, cautioned "consumers against receiving young donor plasma infusions" stating that they are an "unproven treatment".
A granulocyte transfusion is a medical procedure in which granulocytes are infused into a person's blood. Granulocyte transfusions were historically used to prevent and treat infections in people with neutropenia, but the practice declined in popularity in the 1980s. Interest in the procedure increased in the 1990s due to the development of more effective methods for harvesting granulocytes and a growing population of people with severe neutropenia from chemotherapy. However, the treatment's efficacy remains poorly understood and its use is controversial.
The Iranian Blood Transfusion Organization or acronymly IBTO is the highest and only decision-making authority in the field of supply and distribution of healthy blood and blood products in Iran. This organization was established in July 31, 1974.
The Blood Emergency Readiness Corps consists of 36 U.S.-based community blood centers that work together to provide an emergency reserve of blood products to respond to a mass shooting or mass casualty event. The program is administered by the Alliance for Community Transfusion Services (ACTS). To date, the BERC reserve has responded to supply blood products needed as a result of the Collierville Kroger shooting, the 2021 Oxford High School shooting, the Tornado outbreak of December 10–11, 2021, the Robb Elementary School Shooting on May 14, 2022, the tornado outbreak sequence primarily impacting Perrytown, TX in the Texas Panhandle on June 15, 2023, and the tornado outbreak in North Texas on May 26, 2024.