Southwestern Ontario ranks high for those signed up as organ donors
Southwestern Ontario ranks second only to northern Ontario when it comes to the percentage of people who have signed up to be organ donors after they die, a first-of-its-kind study by London researchers says. Researchers took a close look at the number of registered organ and tissue donors in five regions across the province and compared registration rates in the areas in 2016 and 2011, the first year Ontario’s organ donation agency, Trillium Gift of Life Network, launched its online donor portal BeADonor.ca. In 2011, Southwestern Ontario had 504,000 people — about 22.5 per cent of the adult population — registered as donors, said Piotr Wilk, lead study author and associate professor at Western University ’s Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry.
By 2016, the number of registered donors in the region increased to 825,000 people, about 36.4 per cent of the adult population. “There has been no formal systematic research that focused on identifying areas in Ontario with higher, so-called hot spot, or lower, cold spot, rates of deceased organ donor registration,” Wilk wrote in an email. Researchers from Western University ’s Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) and Lawson Health Research Institute — the research arm of London Health Sciences Centre and St. Joseph’s Health Care London — went deeper than just a regional analysis in the study, which appears in the latest issue of Healthcare Quarterly. Study authors geographically grouped people who’d signed up to donate using so-called forward sortation areas, the first three digits of Canadian postal codes used by postal workers to sort and distribute mail. Researchers found organ donation registration rates in the Windsor area grew faster than the provincial average between 2011 and 2016. Study authors also found three hot spots in Southwestern Ontario in 2011: Sarnia, Chatham and Owen Sound.
By 2016, Sarnia and Owen Sound remained registration hot-spots, but Chatham had dropped off the list.
In both 2011 and 2016, the Greater Toronto Area had the lowest organ donor registration rate of all regions in Ontario. However, the area also managed to improve its rates significantly over the five years.
It’s all data that could be used to tailor messages or awareness campaigns in the future, Wilk said. “The need for organs still exceeds the supply. One way to increase the rate of organ donation is to increase the number of individuals who register to be organ donors,” Wilk wrote in an email. “Knowing where to focus registration efforts will help to make any future initiative more effective.” Provincewide, only one in three people — 4.2 million of 12.5 million eligible individuals — have registered to be organ and tissue donors. People can register as organ donors if they’re 16 or older and have a valid health card. Donors can sign up online, by mail or in-person at Service Ontario locations.
The study comes one day after Ontario’s Trillium Gift of Life Network announced a record-breaking year in 2018. Provincewide the agency reported 2,413 tissue donors last year, an 85 per cent increase over the last decade. Wilk said it’s possible socioeconomic factors or awareness of the importance of organ donation in each region could account for the disparity in registered organ donor rates. The next phase of his research will zero in on the exact reasons for the regional differences, he said. “Understanding which of these factors are most related to registration for deceased organ donation will help to develop tailored initiatives to increase the number of registrants — and thereby organ supply — particularly in areas with low registration rates,” Wilk said in an email.