Donate blood for a chance to win CFP Peach Bowl tickets

Welcome back. Well, the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and the American Red Cross are in the final week of their blood drive. Donors are eligible to win tickets, it looks like, to the college football playoff quarterfinal and other prizes as well. So our Eli Jordan is joining us now with ways that you can give back and possibly win big. So Eli, good morning to you. What do we need to know before this all wraps up? Good morning, Alicia. I mean, what we need to know is you need to give blood and you need to give blood early and often. But I know you got just a few more days left to get those two tickets, actually four tickets, but you're only eligible for two. They're giving away two pairs to the Peach Bowl when it's coming up here in Atlanta for the college football playoffs. I think it's the quarterfinals. And you also get an autographed football. So what more incentive, especially if you're a football person, than to give blood and sign up for that? And to do that, you just have to go to, you have to sign up for it first to cfapb.com slash Red Cross. But here to talk more about donating blood is Garrett Reed, who is the head honcho of donor services here in the region. Garrett, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me. And so tell me, Peach Bowl, the Red Cross, you're teaming up. How important is it for people to remember to give blood during the holiday season? People are traveling a lot. It is so critical. We all get busy. It's the holidays. We know we have things going on. We're seeing family. We're having dinners. We're having cookouts. but we also know that we see a little bit of an increase in trauma. People are traveling, they're on the road, they're doing different things. And so people don't stop getting sick just because we're busy with family things. So we ask people to make sure they make those appointments during the holidays because that's sometimes when our patients are at most risk. And it's more than just trauma patients, things like that. We got people that are dealing with chronic illnesses, ailments like sickle cell and cancers and stuff. Exactly. And about 25% of every unit that we collect goes to a cancer patient. So we always want to make sure people have a great holiday but we want to make sure that blood is on the shelves and so this is always seasonally a time we get really focused on making sure we have enough blood on blood available and i mean this could also too you know people in need of blood and make their holiday season much better they'll feel better and you know have more energy just spend time with family and things like that that's exactly right make sure that and we also are doing we do blood screening on every single donor so we're also able to provide you know next month, we have A1C testing, which is free for all of our donors. But we also want to be able to provide that health screening, which can help people stay healthy and happy throughout the holidays. And, you know, you had a rough summer. We did. We had a shortage this summer. We sure did. Yes. We had a crisis shortage for only the second time in our organization's history. And a lot of that has to do with just that demand. And as you mentioned, there's a lot of diseases and pre-existing conditions like sickle cell and things of that nature that we really want to make sure that those units are available. And so because we saw an increase in demand from hospitals and we just saw a little bit of a decrease in donor behavior over the summer because it was busy, World Cup, we get it. But we really want to make sure that we have those shelves fully stocked so everybody brings in a happy, safe new year. How often, you know, if I'm a regular donor, how often can I donate? You can donate every 56 days. And so we encourage people to donate up to four to six times a year. I know you've been a great regular donor and are one of those, as am I. so you can donate up to six times per year per donor and only three percent of those eligible to donate who can donate donate i mean if we just up that a couple percentage points it would help tremendously wouldn't it isn't that fascinating three percent of the nation's all of the nation's blood supply comes from three percent of the population so if you've never donated before i always encourage people come out and donate you're making a direct connection to helping save lives right here in our community you feel great you learn things about your health in your blood. And we have juice and cookies and snacks and a fantastic staff to make your experience wonderful. And just a little perspective, the Red Cross, you're the greatest supply of blood for the nation, aren't you? By far, by far. So we are making sure we're providing that. And then since we are here in Georgia, we are the number one provider in the state. And one of the largest users of blood products, any city in the entire United States is right here in Atlanta. So we are providing a lot of blood to patients here in the Atlanta metro area in particular. One quick question. Are you a college football fan? I am a college football fan. Are you going to be signing up to donate? I am not eligible since I'm an employee. However, I really wish I was eligible and I got a chance to talk to our winners last year. It's just such an amazing thing. Football is part of the fabric of Georgia and regardless of whether your team is playing or not, it's an incredible event. The Peach Bowl Foundation as well as the Mercedes-Benz Stadium just puts on an incredible show. So it would be a really great way to ring in the New Year's on New Year's Day and see some quarterfinals for college football. And, you know, a couple lucky donors are going to get a couple tickets to tell them how to enter. That's right. So what we are asking people to do is go to cfapb.com, so the chickfilapeachbowl.com website, forward slash Red Cross. All you have to do is go on there, fill out a very brief form, and we will take that. You'll be entered into the drawing, which ends this Friday, the 30th. So get those in, get your appointments scheduled, and the great news is once you go on there and register and you're entered to win all of these fantastic prizes. But you can go to any blood drive that is convenient to you. So it doesn't have to be right here in Atlanta where we're standing. It could be anywhere in the state of Georgia. Awesome. Well, Garrett Reed, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. And, Elyse, again, if you're interested in the football tickets and donating blood, cfapb.com forward slash Red Cross. I'll kick it back to you, Elyse. There you go. Ends on Friday, so definitely get on it. It's just something that you want to do. Elyse, thank you so much for that. We appreciate it.