Vox sanguinis
December 9, 2025 · via Europe PMC
An interorganizational task force for disasters affecting US blood supply.
Ramsey G, Berry F.
AI summary — for doctors, generated from the abstract only
The US lacks a central authority for blood supply, and an interorganizational task force coordinated by AABB provides collaborative disaster response.
What was studied
A descriptive review of the organization, history and representative disaster responses of the Interorganizational Task Force for Domestic Disasters and Acts of Terrorism, founded after 9/11.
Key findings
- The task force includes five civilian and military blood organizations, five healthcare organizations and federal health liaisons.
- It communicates weekly with federal partners on blood supply readiness.
- It has been activated for weather events, Zika, COVID-19, cyberattacks and the Haiti earthquake.
Clinical relevance
Blood centers and hospital transfusion services can understand who coordinates national blood needs and messaging during disasters.
Who should care
Limitations
It is a descriptive account of one organization without outcome measures, so effectiveness is not quantified.
Awareness of this coordination structure may help transfusion services plan for disaster scenarios.
This is an AI-generated summary of the published abstract, not a clinical recommendation. It may not reflect the full text or subsequent updates — verify against the original source before acting on it.
Abstract
Background and objectives
The US Interorganizational Task Force for Domestic Disasters and Acts of Terrorism (Interorganizational Disaster Task Force [IDTF]) is coordinated by the Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies (AABB). The IDTF was founded in 2001 in response to the 9/11 attack and is part of the US Department of Homeland Security's National Response Framework for disaster responses. We sought to set out the objectives, methods and activities of the IDTF.
Materials and methods
We reviewed the organization and history of the IDTF and representative disaster responses coordinated by the IDTF.
Results
The IDTF is composed of representatives from five civilian and military blood organizations, five key healthcare organizations and liaisons from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and two HHS agencies. The IDTF promotes disaster preparation by blood centres and transfusion services and communicates weekly with its federal partners on the disaster readiness of the US blood supply. During disasters, which often interrupt regional donor operations, the IDTF helps in guiding national blood collection efforts, provides data-based messages to HHS and the public on blood donation needs and coordinates inter-regional blood transport and blood-supply infrastructure support. The IDTF has been activated for large-scale weather events, Zika and COVID-19 epidemics, cyberattacks and an earthquake (Haiti).
Conclusion
Because the US blood supply is not under a centralized authority, the IDTF is a unique and critical forum for collaborative private-public sector partnership to overcome disaster-related challenges to blood availability.
DOI
10.1111/vox.70166
PMID
41365529
PMCID
PMC13649364
Research metadata (titles, abstracts, authors, publication dates) is sourced from Europe PMC, which aggregates content from PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central, and other providers under the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM/NCBI). NLM does not claim copyright on abstracts; the original journal publishers or authors may hold rights to the full articles. AI-generated summaries are derived only from the abstract, never the full text, and are always labeled as AI-generated.
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