Date of Conferral

2023

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Public Policy and Administration

Advisor

Raj Singh

Abstract

Abstract

The organ-donor shortage remains a pressing issue facing the transplant community. There is a significant gap between supply and demand, which continues to broaden. This general qualitative study aimed to provide a road map to define the role of social media and its interrelationship with increasing organ donation. The study utilizes the potential of a communication framework to increase outreach and education, serving as an alternative to increasing organ donors’ participation. The conceptual underpinnings for this study are the Social Representations Theory, the Organ Donation Willingness Model, and the Theory of Planned Behavior. The data was collected using an online eight-item Survey Monkey questionnaire, conducted with a purposeful sample of sixty-one transplant doctors, nurses, and coordinators at Kansas Medical University Hospital, along with transplant athletes from the MO-Kan team were used to collect the data. The data were exported from Survey Monkey into Microsoft Excel for the first coding cycle. The second cycle consisted of analyzing the code data using IBM SPSS. The results demonstrated the relationship between social media and organ donation. The social change implications of this study concluded that social media could be a conduit to address the shortage of donor organs. By targeting the public through social media, new interventions, and policies can be identified and developed, and offered as mechanisms to increase donor organs.

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