Allison Atlas Award

NMDP Awards Flint Resident

Nancy Kontak, a labor liaison at the United Way of Lapeer and Genesee counties in Michigan, is a passionate advocate of the need for unrelated volunteer marrow and blood stem cell donors for the National Marrow Donor Program^® (NMDP). She has personally recruited more than 13,000 marrow and blood stem cell donors for the NMDP Registry.

Kontak has a reputation for recruiting quality donors. The commitment exhibited by those donors is a testament to the exemplary teaching she does at donor drives.

Kontak incorporates her creativity at her drives; one example was the Basketball Dribble Relay for Bone Marrow. She recruited 50 young men, members of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity in Flint, to take turns dribbling a basketball along back roads to a fraternity house in East Lansing. She and volunteers followed them along the 50 mile route in two buses, serving apple pie and cupcakes to the players as they switched places in the relay. The proceeds from the event will help pay for new potential donors to get their blood tested.

At its annual Council Meeting in November, the NMDP presented Kontak with the Allison Atlas Award. The award is presented each year to a person who has demonstrated outstanding commitment to the donor recruitment and/or retention process and raising awareness levels of the general public about the benefits of the NMDP.

"It was an honor just to be nominated by the Lansing Donor Center. I wouldn't be able to do this without the help of the United Way of Genesee County, the UAW, and the community. I truly believe the work we do through the NMDP connects people throughout the world by saving lives," said Kontak.

The award presentation was part of the NMDP's annual Council Meeting in Minneapolis. Approximately 850 people from the NMDP's Network in the United States and abroad attend this three-day gathering. Individuals who play roles in matching volunteer marrow donors with unrelated transplant recipients are brought together to participate in workshops and seminars focusing on marrow and blood stem cell transplantation issues, including umbilical cord blood banking and new methods of tissue matching.

Created in 1986, the Minneapolis-based NMDP facilitates unrelated marrow and blood stem cell transplants for the treatment of leukemia and more than 70 other diseases through an extensive network of national and international partners. By recruiting committed donors, maintaining the largest and most diverse Registry of potential volunteer donors in the world and offering patient services, at least 140 patients receive stem cell transplants through the NMDP each month. The NMDP's Registry contains more than 4.5 million volunteers and is the only one that searches all three sources of stem cells available: marrow, peripheral blood and umbilical cord blood. As of Sept. 30, 2001, the NMDP has facilitated more than 13,000 transplants throughout the world.

For more information about the NMDP, how to become a donor or marrow and blood stem cell transplantation, call 1-800-MARROW-2.