Leading the flock: organ donation feelings, beliefs, and intentions among African American clergy and community residents.

CONTEXT: Despite a considerable potential role in organ donation for African American clergy, there has been little investigation to date of the beliefs, attitudes, and personal intentions of such clergy regarding donation. OBJECTIVE: To compare the beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intentions regarding organ donation among African American clergy to those of African American residents of the same large US city. DESIGN: Focus groups and 3 cross-sectional surveys. SETTING: Greater Houston, Tex, metropolitan area. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 761 randomly selected African American community residents and 311 African American clergy. MAIN OUTCOMES MEASURES: Beliefs about the importance of organ donation; how comfortable one is in thinking about donation; whether one believes that organ donation is against one's religion; trust in healthcare professionals regarding death declaration; concerns that donation leads to body mutilation; and the likelihood that one will donate one's own organs upon death. RESULTS: Compared to general African American residents, African American clergy in the Houston area were found more often to believe in the importance of donation; to be more comfortable with thinking about donation; to feel more certain that donation was not against their religion; to believe that they could trust healthcare professionals regarding death declaration; to feel less often that donation leads to mutilation of the body; and to indicate a greater likelihood of donating their own organs upon death. The same was found to be true among clergy and congregants of the largest religious denomination in Houston, the Baptists.

Family discussion about organ donation among African Americans.

CONTEXT: Relatively little is known about family discussion concerning donation among African Americans in the United States, especially discussion predating the brain death of a family member and the donor request process. OBJECTIVES: To explore the inclination of African Americans to engage in family discussion about organ donation and the characteristics of those who expressed a desire to their families to donate their organs upon death. DESIGN: Focus groups and a cross-sectional survey. SETTING: A large metropolitan complex in Houston, Tex, with a relatively sizeable African American population. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 18 persons of African American background participated in 2 focus groups; 375 randomly selected African American residents were surveyed by questionnaire. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Prodonation family discussion. RESULTS: Only 100% of subjects were found to be in the "action" (having had a prodonation discussion) or "maintenance" (having had a prodonation discussion and not inclined to alter one's wishes) stages with regard to family discussion. These subjects were not found distinguished from others by age, gender, education, or frequency of religious attendance. They were, however, found differentiated from others by feelings of diffuse support for donation, knowledge of donation, having read or heard a lot about donation, and by the belief that organ donation was not against one's religion-when these variables were individually considered. Yet, when these variables were simultaneously considered in a multivariate discriminant function analysis, diffuse support for donation no longer distinguished those in the action/maintenance stage from other subjects.