ADVOCACY FOR UNDERREPRESENTED GROUPS Natasha's Place is a leading advocate for laws and policies to harness the utility of cord blood stem cells, and is currently lobbying states to pass the "Cord Blood Information Bill." The bill requires healthcare providers to give maternity patients “timely, relevant and appropriate information” regarding the option to bank or donate umbilical cord blood. The founders of the Kasey Rose Foundation, whose infant daughter received a cord blood transplant after not being able to find a bone marrow donor, inspired the template for this bill (HB 6678) to be passed in the state of Connecticut in June 2009. We are now placing similar bills in two states and hope to have it in the ten states most populated with people of mixed heritage and minorities over the next two years. We are also spear heading the "Bone Marrow Transplant Patients Deserve a Better Chance Chance to Survive" petition asking transplant centers to preferentially give cord blood stem cell transplants when mixed heritage people don’t have a related donor or a perfectly matched, same race, unrelated bone marrow donor. We've been pushing this idea for some time and some transplant centers are already beginning to recognize that cord blood is as good if not better source of stem cells in many situations. In fact, some transplant centers, such as the University of Minnesota, are doing what we are asking for all of their patients, regardless of race or ethnicity. Minnesota's transplant experience indicates that GVH disease, one of the major causes of transplant-related complications and death with bone marrow transplants, is greatly decreased when they use cord blood stem cells. This is likely because cord blood comes from a baby and babies have a very weak immune system that only mounts a short-lived, non-life threatening graft versus host response, if any at all. Please click here to see the petition.