First paper from project: racially minoritised stem cell donation as ethico-racial imperative

The first peer-reviewed academic journal article from Mix & Match has now been published. The article is entitled “It’s harder for the likes of us”: racially minoritised stem cell donation as ethico-racial imperative. Because this research is funded by the Wellcome Trust, this article is entirely Open Access. This means that you should be able to read it online, or download the article, without a paywall.

The article discusses stem cell donor recruitment work, and explores particularly how ethical action is often racialised in this context.

The paper emerges out of the broader policy acknowledgement that racially minoritised blood malignancy patients have lesser chances of finding a potentially curative stem cell match than white people. Since the 1990s, and to a greater and greater extent over the past two decades, this has generated lots of work to recruit more minoritised people onto registries. Much of this is undertaken by the third sector – particularly small charities – and individuals.

The paper explores the creative practice of both charities and individuals (themselves often minoritised) to make people feel racialised relatedness through storytelling etc. to generate emotion and a sense of urgency. The paper flags how the work to ameliorate health inequity is often distributed to those who personally endure its effects (e.g., not finding a stem cell match). It’s part of one of the broader arguments I’m beginning think is is important to make with this project: we need to rethink that distribution, to make the work of inequity redress itself more equitable.

You can read a blog post that I wrote for my University, which summarises some of the article’s key points.