What is it about?
Social capital is the ‘trust, norms and networks that facilitate co‐operation for mutual benefit’. Test seeking is another motivation to donate, in which persons donate to be tested to find out about their own HIV status (and other infections) in a setting where there is no potential for stigma or social judgment in having infectious disease testing conducted on samples of blood. We conduct this study to understand the association between cognitive and structural social capital and test‐seeking motivation to donate blood at three blood centres in different regions of Brazil.
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Why is it important?
None of the previously conducted studies discussed social capital and blood donation from the perspective that blood donors could be motivated for reasons that are not exclusively altruistic, such as being a test seeker.
Perspectives
Our results are provocative and useful for blood banks. Test seekers have more cognitive social capital. This means that test seekers have more reciprocity, co‐operation, sense of belonging and social support. Blood banks could leverage this to communicate with prospective donors in ways that convince them to seek testing at locations other than blood banks.
Dr Cesar de Almeida-Neto
Faculty of Medicine, University of São Paulo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Relationship between social capital and test seeking among blood donors in Brazil, Vox Sanguinis, August 2012, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/j.1423-0410.2012.01643.x.
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