Dear MABB members,

The Michigan Association of Blood Banks (MABB) celebrated 64 remarkable years in 2018. Every day, new findings, technologies, treatments and research are developing in medicine keeping up with our goals to promote the highest standard of care by providing updated evidence‐based medicine for our patients and donors in the various aspects of blood banking. This also provides an outstanding opportunity to learn, catch up with colleagues, pursue networking, and interact with industry leaders in transfusion medicine.

We had a successful annual meeting in September 2018. In keeping with the rich tradition of our annual meeting, we have invited many wonderful speakers covering a wide range of topics from technical and clinical topics to workplace improvement. I hope all of you enjoyed our meeting. A unique feature of blood bank organizations including MABB is the wide variety and diversity of membership. General technologists, technologists specialized in blood banking, nurses, physicians, administrators, IT technologists, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, all of them contribute to our patient care by taking different roles and all of them are equally important. We wouldn’t be who we are today without all of your support.

We think education and involvement of new or young career professionals are critical for sustaining the future of our organization. We created a new session that focused on young technologists in the 2017 annual meeting, and I was happy to see this session continued in 2018 and hopefully into future meetings. Also, to build this idea, we expanded our recruitment efforts to increase involvement in our various committees by actively reaching out to young members. These efforts have paid off in 2018 as many people enthusiastically raised their hands to work and establish their careers in the MABB organization. I would like to thank the experienced members for mentoring and guiding our young and new committee members. With the increased level of involvement, we were able to expand and re‐organize our committees. As a result, many committees have been more active.

Additionally, we continue to implement new technologies and services to support the organization. This includes an update to our websites, expansion into other social media platforms, and online payment option through the MABB website. Our journey has not ended yet, and we continue to make efforts to expand MABB.

I appreciate all the board members for your support. My vision for MABB this year did not come true without your thoughtful understanding and generous effort. I am grateful for who we are today.

Lastly, we are always open to listen to your opinions and ideas, so please don’t hesitate to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Chisa Yamada, MD
2018 President of Michigan Association of Blood Banks