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This UC Nursing Alumnus is Out for Blood and Tissue Donation Equality
Cole Williams’ Pride and Plasma group advocates for new blood and tissue donation guidelines.
Cole Williams, BSN ’23, fully embraces the advocacy side of the nursing profession.
As a student, Williams co-founded Pride and Plasma, an advocacy group focused on revising restrictions that exclude many queer men, transgender women and non-binary individuals from donating blood and tissue. The group was catapulted into the national media spotlight when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed new blood donation guidelines, which were ultimately approved in May. Since then, Pride and Plasma has expanded its focus to include tissue and organ donation policies, which it says unfairly limit LGBTQ+ individuals.
Queer men were prohibited from donating blood until 2015, when the FDA relaxed its lifetime policy on blood donations from men who have sex with men to a twelve-month deferral period. In 2020, the period was reduced to three months amid a critical blood shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Blood donation centers use the FDA’s guidelines to screen donors and ensure blood is safe for transfusions, but LGBTQ+ advocates, including
Pride and Plasma, argued the previous guidelines were unscientific and discriminatory.
“Someone needed to put pressure on the FDA to do something. Members of Congress, professional associations, advocacy groups … they would all publish a press release or send a letter to the FDA but not much more than that,” Williams says. “We needed to try something different.”
Williams, who interned last summer with a U.S. House Representative and nurse, applied his knowledge of health care and government innerworkings to create Pride and Plasma’s game plan. He and other members, which included classmate Skylar Harris, BSN ’23, reached out to 70 blood centers across the country to collect testimony on how they have been impacted by the blood shortage.
“We could go to the FDA and say, ‘These blood centers are hurting. Why aren’t you doing anything to help patients, providers and facilities?’” Williams says.
Alongside a website with resources and a petition for the public to support the cause, Pride and Plasma drafted a 34-page argument for the
FDA. Williams was given five minutes to present during a virtual meeting of the agency’s Blood Products Advisory Committee, which convened in December 2022 for the first time in 13 months.
“I was talking a mile a minute to get everything through,” Williams says. After his presentation, Williams was interviewed by national news outlets, including the Washington Post, CBS News, PBS Newshour and Insider. About a month later, the FDA announced proposed guidelines, now in place, that use gender-inclusive, individual risk-based questions to assess donor eligibility and reduce the risk of HIV transmission through transfusion. The recommendations permit donations from anyone who does not report having new or multiple partners along with engaging in anal sex the previous three months.
Williams says this represents a step forward not only for queer men, but also for transgender and nonbinary persons.
“No one is really talking about that, but it is a really big win for that community,” he says. By removing gendered language, transgender women and non-binary individuals will no longer be subject to policies meant to be applied to men who have sex with men and may be eligible to donate.
Harris, who oversaw Midwest outreach efforts for Pride and Plasma until she graduated in the spring, said at the time the new guidelines were released it felt surreal.
“You usually don’t get these kinds of results so quickly. I think it’s a combination of the people who have worked before us, some of Pride and Plasma’s work and the research that’s out there — it all just came together at the perfect time.”
The group is now advocating for updates to tissue donation guidelines, in place since 1994, which do not allow donations from men who have had sex with other men (MSM) within five years.
“That is mind-boggling, but people just aren’t aware of that, so that’s something we’re really working on,” Williams says.
The group plans to use a similar approach: gather research and stakeholder input, share information with the public and lobby the FDA for changes.
But tackling tissue donations is more complex, Williams says: “With blood donation, it was something people could experience. No one knows about [tissue donation]. There’s a much steeper learning curve and next to no research. We are really putting it all together ourselves.”
At the same time, Williams is working full time as a nurse and developing other policy-focused projects. He moved to his dream location, Boston, to work on the med-surg floor at Tufts Medical Center and is expanding on his bachelor’s degree capstone, aimed at advancing full-practice authority for nurse practitioners. He also looks to promote legislation that establishes safe RN staffing ratios and multistate licensure, as well as develop nursefocused educational content on how government works and ways to get involved in health policy.
In September, Williams served as keynote speaker for the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA): Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ Equality Virtual Nursing Summit, part of GLMA’s Annual Conference on LGBTQ+ Health. Pride and Plasma also submitted its research brief on the five-year MSM deferment policy to the FDA’s Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee, along with updates on tissue donation protocols in the United Kingdom, which strengthen the organization’s arguments.
FOR MORE INFORMATION about Pride and Plasma’s efforts, visit their website at prideandplasma.com.
