The Donor App is a smartphone app that helps transplant candidates create a Facebook (FB) post telling their story about organ failure and their need for a transplant. We previously reported that our pilot participants were 6.6 times more likely to have a potential live donor (PLD) come forward compared to matched controls. We sought to explore whether the quality of the FB posts created via the app increased the likelihood of live donor referrals.

METHODS: We conducted a single-center cohort study of 54 adult kidney-only and liver-only transplant candidates using the app. Additionally, we invited participants to join a common FB group. We retrospectively analyzed FB for participants' posts to determine content qualitatively with NVivo Plus.

RESULTS: Among 54 participants, 24 (44.4%) had at least 1 FB post. There were no differences between participants with a post versus participants with no posts (Table 1). FB posts were more likely to have “Public” share settings (58.3%) and had an average word count of 153 (range: 16-460). Other post information included a photo (29.2%), cause of organ failure (75.0%), burden of living with organ failure (83.3%), need for a transplant (75.0%), and links to transplant center websites (62.5%). Of the 23 potential living donors that came forward on behalf of our study population, 16 (69.6%) came forward for participants who had a FB post (12 for kidney donation and 4 for liver donation) (Table 2). There were no differences between posts of participants with a PLD versus no PLD (Table 3).

CONCLUSIONS: The Donor App is a resource that helped some transplant candidates identify PLDs via FB. Long-term follow-up and future studies are necessary to further improve Donor App efficacy.

CITATION INFORMATION: Konel J., Weeks S., Kumar K., Helfer D., Segev D., Garonzik Wang J., Henderson M., Cameron A. Qualitative Analysis of Facebook Posts Created via the Donor Application Am J Transplant. 2017;17 (suppl 3).

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