biology

Vitalant

Vitalant is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Vitalant rather than just read about it. In short: Vitalant (formerly Blood Systems Inc.) is a nonprofit organization that collects blood from volunteer donors and provides blood, blood products and services across the United States. It was founded in 1943 as the Salt River Valley Blood Bank in Phoenix, Arizona.

Key takeaways

Vitalant belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Vitalant to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Vitalant from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Vitalant (formerly Blood Systems Inc.) is a nonprofit organization that collects blood from volunteer donors and provides blood, blood products and services across the United States. It was founded in 1943 as the Salt River Valley Blood Bank in Phoenix, Arizona. Vitalant is the nation’s largest independent, nonprofit blood services provider exclusively focused on providing blood and comprehensive transfusion medicine services. The organization comprises a network of about 120 donation centers across the U.S. and are the sole blood provider to about 900 hospitals across the United States. Vitalant is a founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies (formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks) and was involved in the creation of the America's Blood Centers consortium of nonprofit blood centers. The Vitalant Research Institute (formerly Blood Systems Research Institute) is housed in San Francisco with a second campus in Denver. VRI is supported by grants from the National Institute of Health and has collaborative partnerships with major universities and medical centers such as the University of California, San Francisco, University of Southern California, Children's National Medical Center, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, University of Pittsburgh, Children’s Medical Center, Oakland, U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School Partners AIDS Research Center.

Organizational history The main blood bank that became United Blood Services was founded in 1943 as the Salt River Valley Blood Bank in Phoenix, Arizona, by Opal Davis and Kitty Baldwin. Not long after its creation, parent company Blood Systems, Inc., was formed. Other blood banks that later became part of Blood Systems were founded in this same time period, including Blood Centers of the Pacific—whose predecessor, the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank, was founded in 1941 as the first community blood bank in the United States—and the Inland Northwest Blood Center (1945). Blood Systems was the first interstate blood bank, operating under multiple names; by 1967, it served 850 hospitals in 12 states. The youngest predecessor to Vitalant, LifeSource, was created in 1987 by the merger of the Blood Center of Northern Illinois with operations of the American Red Cross in the Chicago area. The company grew through mergers with other blood centers. On September 24, 2018, Blood Systems merged all of its existing brands under the Vitalant name. These included Lifeblood, Blood Centers of the Pacific, BloodSource, Bonfils Blood Center, Central Blood Bank, Community Blood Services, Inland Northwest Blood Center, LifeShare, LifeSource, and United Blood Services.

See also Blood bank Lizzie's Loot, a Tucson, Arizona based charity organization that organizes blood drives and other fundraisers

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Vitalant

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Vitalant claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Vitalant before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Vitalant ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Vitalant

In research: Vitalant appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Vitalant in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Vitalant is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Blood banks in the United States, Blood products, Charities based in Arizona, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Vitalant outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Vitalant in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Vitalant means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Vitalant out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Vitalant in simple terms?

Why does Vitalant matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Vitalant?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Vitalant.