New team member: meet Tjeerd

In December 2015, Tjeerd Piersma started as a PhD student at the department of Donor Studies (Sanquin Research) and the Center for Philanthropic Studies (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam). His project focuses on blood donor careers, examining changes in blood donor behaviour over the life course from a sociological point of view. Do life events (e.g. childbirth, starting a new job, the death of a loved one) influence the decision to start or stop donating blood? How can we explain these influences? And how can we effectively recruit and retain our blood donors?
The first paper was published in 2017, reviewing results from recent blood donor studies on characteristics of blood donors and non-donors. Currently, Tjeerd is working with the Donor InSight data to examine whether and why life events influence donors to stop donating blood. You can read more about the preliminary results in this newsletter.