Context: As part of an organ sharing network's outreach, African American adults were interviewed to assess their awareness of the network's efforts and willingness to donate their organs after death.
Objective: To describe (1) the proportion who expressed their intentions to be an organ donor, (2) the means they had used, and (3) sociodemographic characteristics of the participants who used a particular means.
Design: A repeated, cross-sectional, random-digit dialing telephone interview was conducted from July 2005 (start of wave 1) to April 2006 (end of wave 3). Each interview averaged 7 minutes and consisted of 60 items.
Setting: Trained interviewers placed telephone calls to the residences of African Americans who resided in 1 of 4 New Jersey locales: East Orange/Orange, Irvington, Jersey City/Newark, and Trenton.
Participants: One thousand five hundred sixty-seven African Americans, aged 18 to 95 years.
Main outcome measures: Five Yes/No items were used to determine if participants had declared their intention to be an organ donor via driver's license application, donor card, donor registry, will/healthcare directive, or discussion with a family member.
Results: Twenty-seven percent of the participants had expressed their intentions to be an organ donor with an organ donor card, driver's license, donor registry, or will/healthcare directive. The participants who had used one or more of these formal means were 14.4 times more likely to have discussed their intention to be an organ donor with a family member than were the participants who had not.