IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v22y1986i10p1075-1080.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Increasing kidney transplantation in Britain: The importance of donor cards, public opinion and medical practice

Author

Listed:
  • Lewis, Alan
  • Snell, Martin

Abstract

The Department of Health and Social Security has recently spent over three-quarters of a million pounds advertising the merits of kidney donor cards. The advertising campaign stresses that carrying signed cards requesting the removal of kidneys and other organs after death both increases the number of kidneys available and increases the number of kidney transplants that actually take place. This paper examines the relative success of the kidney donor card campaign in Britain and the nature of the relationship between a more widespread distribution of donor cards and the frequency of kidney transplantation. This is done in two main ways. (1) Through a review of the evidence detailing public support expressed in the media and from social surveys (including original empirical work conducted at Bath University). (2) By an analysis of previously unpublished statistical evidence made available by the Department of Health and Social Security. The paper concludes that the battle for public sympathy towards kidney donation has largely been won and the kidney donor card campaign has been a success. However these successes perhaps deflect attention away from more important issues in the transplant equation, as the link between card carrying and increased transplantation is neither direct nor simple.

Suggested Citation

  • Lewis, Alan & Snell, Martin, 1986. "Increasing kidney transplantation in Britain: The importance of donor cards, public opinion and medical practice," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 22(10), pages 1075-1080, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:22:y:1986:i:10:p:1075-1080
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(86)90208-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:22:y:1986:i:10:p:1075-1080. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.