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What is Cheekswab?

Cheekswab is an independent initiative to spread awareness of the need for bone marrow donors within ethnic minority groups.

Cheekswab hopes to accomplish this by both presenting and contextualizing the need for donors through the content of this website, in addition to actively engaging individuals by organizing bone marrow drives within communities. Drives are organized in conjunction with the National Marrow Donor Program. However, Cheekswab is not officially affiliated with the NMDP and is not a spokesperson for the organization.

Cheekswab is currently localized in the Northern VA/Washington DC/Maryland metropolitan region. The name "Cheekswab" is derived from the cotton swabs that registrants use to join the bone marrow registry. To learn more about the registration process, please click here.

Cheekswab is NOT a medical entity. Please make sure to consult a medical professional before making decisions regarding your health.

Mission and Purpose

Our mission is to spread awareness of the need for bone marrow donors to as many people as possible and to increase the number of minority donors within the National Bone Marrow Registry as much as we can.

Cheekswab wants to identify and eliminate the barriers that inhibit potential donors from joining the registry. These barriers include a lack of awareness and information about the need for bone marrow donors, fear and confusion about the process, and not knowing how to physically join the registry once a person is willing.

We believe that...

  • The facts that show the urgent need for minority bone marrow donors speak for themselves.
  • People by nature are loving, empathetic, and willing to help others. As long as you treat others with respect and have the intent to inform honestly and not deceive, they are capable of making their own personal decisions about whether or not a cause is worth supporting. That decision deserves to be respected.
  • The current reality where minorities remain under-represented in the National Bone Marrow Registry is not a product of apathy or selfishness, but a lack of awareness. There can and will be a day when minorities will have just as strong a likelihood of finding a bone marrow donor as non-minorities.
  • Lives are at stake and lives can and will be saved by the recruitment of more donors.
  • The decision to donate bone marrow to another person means lives will be changed forever, for both the recipient and donor alike.