What We Do

New York Blood Center, founded in 1964, has a long and rich history. Yet our mission today remains largely the same as it was four decades ago: to help save the lives of potentially 22 million people by providing high-quality transfusion products and services in the tri-state area.

As the nation's largest community-based, non-profit, independent blood center, we work hard each and every day to meet our vital, life-saving community mission. We accomplish this through the generosity of nearly 2,000 volunteers each day but also through the diligence of dedicated staff in regional, centralized and specialized departments and operations. Click on "Where We Are" to learn more about how our integrated operations and how we uniquely recruit, collect and distribute life-saving blood products each day for patients in need in hospitals in New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

We also have a growing medical agenda dedicated to delivering increased patient care and medical innovation as well as enhanced donor benefits too. Click on "Community Health" to learn more about our current donor and patient initiatives. Our "Clinical Services" program acts as an adjunct and resource to hospitals in our community by providing expertise in transfusion medicine as well as delivering over 8,500 specialized procedures each year.

Click on "Hemophilia Services" to read more about our unique relationship with the Hemophilia Services Consortium, Inc., which allows New York Blood Center to be certain over 1,500 local hemophilia patients get the 24-hour-a-day access to life-saving clotting factors, support and counseling they require. Specially trained nurses and clinicians notify and counsel over 5,000 donors each year whose test results warrant it. They also administer patient programs, track the history of donations for area hospitals when called upon to do so, and act as a resource on donor history and post-transfusion events. And our Special Collections staff act like a mom, nurse and social worker rolled into one as they hand-hold anxious patients donating blood prior to their own surgeries or the donations of friends and family earmarked for a loved one. To learn more about those unique donations click on "Types of Donations".

New York Blood Center's "National Cord Blood Program" is the oldest and largest public cord blood bank. We collect, process, test and store cord blood that is donated to us for anyone who might need it. Our program makes cord blood available under an Investigational New Drug (IND) exemption from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for children and adults faced with life-threatening illnesses who need a "stem cell" transplant from an unrelated donor. NYBC's National Cord Blood Program also was the first public cord blood bank in the world to receive NetCord-FACT accreditation (June 2003).

Setting New York Blood Center apart from any other blood center in the world is the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute (LFKRI), a world-renown institution that has pioneered basic and applied research efforts that have paved the way for blood disease prevention, treatments, cures and therapies. Click on "Research" to read more about LFKRI's labs and their ground-breaking work that has made it possible for people the world over to live healthier lives.

And last, but certainly not least, we are committed to educating our donors and patients but our professional partners as well. We have trained over 100 physicians through our one-year Transfusion Medicine Fellowship with program graduates accounting for nearly one-third of the blood bank directors in our community. Click on "Professional Education" to learn more about our varied continuing education programs.