Beyond Blood: Building High-impact Partnerships and Operational Diversification Avenue Between Blood Centers and Human Milk Banks

Proposed Session Description: Human milk banks (HMBs) are essential for providing pasteurized donor human milk (PDHM) to premature and medically vulnerable infants when mother’s own milk is unavailable. However, despite growth in the number of HMBs, PDHM supply may not meet demand in many regions. This session presents a practical, interprofessional operational model highlighted by the session team in recent literature: partnerships between blood donation centers/blood collection establishments (BDCs/BCEs) and HMBs to expand access through milk depots, donor screening support, quality systems, and logistics infrastructure.

The session will pair a human milk bank operations leader (Freedom Kolb, The Milk Bank) with a transfusion medicine/blood center physician leader (Ruchika Goel, MD) to provide complementary perspectives. Participants will learn how HMBs operate (donor recruitment/screening, processing, storage, distribution, and safety) and how blood centers can assess, design, and implement partnerships that align with local needs and organizational capabilities. The session will share multiple real-world examples of existing synergies, including donor recruitment networks, depot infrastructure, temperature-controlled storage/transport, infectious disease screening expertise, and quality/regulatory systems that blood centers already maintain.
Faculty will also address practical implementation issues: mapping service areas, defining partnership roles (depot/dispensary/screening site), establishing MOUs/contracts, aligning SOPs, ensuring documentation and regulatory compliance, and planning public awareness efforts. Risks and challenges—including specialized training needs, regulatory gaps/variation, liability considerations, and cultural/social barriers—will be discussed with mitigation strategies.

Attendees will leave with an actionable framework to evaluate feasibility and launch or strengthen blood center–milk bank partnerships that expand safe access to PDHM while advancing community service and operational diversification. The article specifically frames these collaborations as an operational diversification and community service avenue for blood centers.