Sarah Traynor, PhD; Christine Egede, MD; Ryan E. Hillmer, PhD; Scott J. Hetzel, MS; Meghan M. Cotter, PhD
WMJ. 2025;124(5):463-466.
ABSTRACT
Background: Individuals who donate their bodies to academic, whole-body donation programs support health science education, training, and research. This is the first report on Wisconsin whole-body donor demographics and the extent to which donors represent the state population.
Methods: Donor demographic data from 2016 through 2021 were collected from death certificate worksheets and compared with Wisconsin population data from the US Census Bureau and state health statistics.
Results: Most donors were non-Hispanic White individuals, did not have a college degree, and did not work in health care. The median age at death was 86 years. Twenty-eight percent of donors served in the armed forces. Donors were not representative of the Wisconsin population in age, race, ethnicity, or military service.
Discussion: Whole-body donors provide an invaluable resource for health science education and research. Understanding donor demographics is an important first step in examining diversity and representation within Wisconsin’s body donation programs.
Author affiliations: Department of Academic Affairs, University of Wisconsin (UW) School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, Wisconsin (Traynor, Egede, Cotter); Department of Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Hillmer); Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, UW School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, Wisconsin (Hetzel).
Corresponding author: Sarah Traynor, PhD; 1290E Medical Sciences Center, 1300 University Ave, Madison, WI, 53706; email setraynor@wisc.edu; ORCID ID 0000-0003-2259-8974
Financial disclosures: None declared.
Funding/support: None declared.
Acknowledgements: The authors wish to thank Clayton Strang, Robert Schlotthaur, Kayla Raydel, Amy Ludwig-Kubinski, Alisha Trapp, and James Wachholz.
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