When Bob Gleason retires in June after two decades of service to Bloodworks as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), he will leave an already-cemented legacy as a values-driven leader and finance maestro.   “Looking back, I simply cannot imagine my experience at Bloodworks without him, and I count it as one of my great fortunes in life to have been his colleague and his friend,” said Curt Bailey, Bloodworks President and CEO.  Bob has set a high bar, and Bloodworks looked far and wide for a business leader who could match his standards and acumen. And now, Bloodworks is excited to wel ..read more

Charles Drew and Karl Landsteiner may not be household names but they’re well-known within blood banking and hematology. Even less mainstream are the female physicians and researchers who made their mark on this field. In honor of Women’s History Month, we celebrate 10 pioneering women in transfusion medicine. Winifred Mayer Ashby, PhD (1879 – 1975) Using a groundbreaking technique that bears her name (the Ashby method), Dr. Ashby challenged the assumptions of her time to show that the lifespan of erythrocytes (red blood cells) is upwards of 100 days. The resulting understanding of red cell l ..read more

Bloodworks donors always inspire me. Conversations with donors lift my spirits and encourage me to schedule my next blood donation. If I’m having a bad day, I can visit Bloodworks’ social media pages to see positive comments or search the #BloodworksNW hashtag for photos of people selflessly giving of themselves to a stranger. When I saw a pic on Bloodworks’ Instagram account of a donor repping the jersey of my favorite player on my favorite football team, I got an idea: why not see if other local fans would be interested in donating? Now, I just want to be transparent: I have a lot of love fo ..read more

 “Yes, I am feeling healthy and well today… no, I’m not on antibiotics right now,” donors read and respond as they select “yes” or “no” in Quickpass on the day of their donation. Many of our donors know that this is the start of the donation process. Many donors don’t even think twice if a question is different; they simply go through the motions of answering. Sometimes questions might not make sense at first to our donors. Because some changes are coming to the Donor Health History Questionnaire (DHQ) it seemed fitting to dive into these primary Quickpass questions. These initial fifty-s ..read more

It was a dark and stormy night. Typical for October in Seattle. Shielding my eyes from the rain, I ventured across the parking lot with 5 of my friends toward the Georgetown Morgue with the kind of bravery I keep in reserve for only this time of year. We were going to pay money to be scared silly tonight. We purchased our tickets and headed for the back of the line. I guess I didn’t realize how many of my fellow Seattle-lites enjoyed haunted houses. There were so many of them. Some dressed in costume, others under umbrellas, they all stood and chatted and engaged with roaming monsters up the l ..read more

The greater Portland, OR area will soon have a new option to donate blood.   Bloodworks is excited to announce our brand-new Beaverton Donor Center, opening on October 21. Donors can already begin booking appointments.  The Beaverton Donor Center represents an exciting evolution for Bloodworks. We currently serve 15 hospitals in eight Oregon counties, and while Bloodworks’ Vancouver team has collected in Portland in limited capacity for years, the need for locally provided blood products has outpaced our ability to serve local donors.  Why Beaverton?  Vancouver, WA isn ..read more

From calorie restriction to the mythical Fountain of Youth, humankind’s search for new (and, occasionally, extreme) ways to avoid aging and defy death remains an immortal constant. Every now and again, an article pops up on the (alleged) restorative properties of young blood, either in the form of some Silicon Valley start-up or a Kardashian-approved cosmetic procedure. The TV show Silicon Valley parodied this idea by transfusing blood from the arm of a “blood boy” directly into the show’s supervillain CEO. In real life, tech mogul Bryan Johnson was recently in the news for receiving plasma an ..read more

Bloodworks Northwest is best known as the primary blood bank in the Pacific Northwest, supplying over 1,000 units of blood to hospitals every day. But beyond blood banking, Bloodworks is also dedicated to maximizing the amount of good each of those blood donations make possible. We accomplish this through our internationally acclaimed Research Institute, where scientists study ways to make blood safer, and how to unleash its power to advance human health. Today, Bloodworks Research Institute is focused on growth –strategically recruiting new talent for the first time since 2016 – all to save m ..read more

We are thrilled to announce that four Bloodworks teams have received over $3.7 million in grants from the Andy Hill Cancer Research Endowment (CARE) Fund to bolster the growth of our research, apheresis, and cell therapy programs in support of patients battling cancer.  In 2022, the Washington State legislature made a commitment to improving the lives of Washingtonians through an historic investment in cancer research through the CARE Fund. With the announcement of their Shared Resources and Infrastructure grant, they intend to bolster Washington State’s cancer research ecosystem by suppo ..read more

People around the world are living longer than ever – 33 countries average a lifespan of 80 years or more. While life expectancy in the US has dropped in recent years (in part due to the COVID pandemic), we can still expect to live longer than our grandparents. This shift is largely due to advancements in science, technology, social equity, and our collective understanding of these areas. We have access to better tools and healthier foods, know the importance of taking care of our bodies, and greater means and ability to do so. A bottle of small pills can cure diseases that otherwise might hav ..read more