Students of Stanford professor whose work was featured in Blink launch campaign to register South Asians with Be The Match® National Marrow Donor Program
Would you bet your life on 1 in 20,000 odds? No one should have to, but that’s what Stanford Professor Nalini Ambady – and other Indian Americans – face. Nalini is a renowned social psychologist whose current and former graduate students are harnessing the power of social media in an attempt to save her life. They have eight weeks to find a South Asian bone marrow donor. Her students have planned more than 30 registration drives around the country and launched an ambitious social media campaign in order to increase the number of South Asians registered with the National Marrow Donor Program®. The campaign has reached 415,334 Facebook users so far, including more than 60,000 users in India. The video they created in support of Professor Ambady’s search had 4,500 views in its first three days on YouTube and 105,000 views through the Stanford Facebook page, and was shared more than 1,000 times through Facebook. Its launch increased first-time visits to the campaign’s website by nearly half, up to 25,878 visits. You can watch it at NaliniNeedsYou.com.
Professor Nalini Ambady is a world-class social scientist and is the first South Asian to achieve the highest levels of prominence in social psychology. Nalini has produced groundbreaking research resulting in hundreds of publications and tens of thousands of citations. Her work has been featured in a number of popular press books, including Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. Nalini is also the first Indian ever to have taught in the Harvard and Stanford psychology departments, and is the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. In 2004, the mother of two was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenus Leukemia (AML), a cancer of the blood. After eight years in remission, Nalini’s leukemia has returned, and she needs a bone marrow transplant within the next eight weeks for the highest chance to survive. Due to certain genetic markers, her match will almost certainly be South Asian, but donors of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepalese, Bhutanese, Maldivian or Sri Lankan descent are some of the least represented groups in the National Marrow Donor Program®.
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HelpNaliniNow is using Facebook to spread the word about the need for South Asians to register as bone marrow donors. NaliniNeedsYou.com, the campaign’s site which has had 13,000 views over the past two weeks, has information about registering as a donor with Be The Match® and about setting up a bone marrow donor registry drive – to date, the campaign has launched more than 30 drives across the US. Those registering online at Join.BeTheMatch.org Nalini are asked to submit the code “MatchNalini" so that their swab kits can be expedited, due to the urgency of Nalini’s case.
To learn more about the effort to save Professor Nalini Ambady’s life, please visit http:www.nalinineedsyou.com
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About HelpNaliniNow
HelpNaliniNow is a movement that is using social media to disseminate a call to action to South Asians to register with Be The Match® as potential bone marrow donors. HelpNaliniNow was created by friends and current and former students of Professor Nalini Ambady, a beloved friend, renowned researcher and professor at Stanford University, and the active mom of two teenage daughters, Maya and Leena. Nalini was diagnosed with a recurrence of leukemia and urgently needs a bone marrow transplant from a genetically matched donor. Someone out there is a perfect match, but they may not be on the registry yet. There are hundreds of people out there who need donors. For members of racial and ethnic minority groups in the US, like Nalini who is South Asian, the chances of finding a donor are significantly lower. It's more likely that a match will come from someone with a shared ethnic background, but everyone has the potential to be a match for Nalini or someone else. The National Marrow Donor Program® registration process takes only minutes and if you are actually called in to donate it is a relatively short process for you that will, quite literally, have the potential to save a life. If you register now, it could be Nalini's life that you save.
