Sickle Cell Awareness

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CDC is working to raise awareness about sickle cell disease. You can help by reading and sharing our resources with friends and family.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited blood disorder that is present at birth and affects approximately 100,000 Americans. CDC is committed to studying SCD and other blood disorders in order to improve the health and care of people with these conditions.

Online Resources

Sickle Cell Trait Toolkit is a collection of fact sheets about sickle cell trait.
Sickle Cell Disease National Resource Directory is a listing of national agencies, specialty healthcare centers, and community-based organizations that provide services and resources for people affected by SCD. The goal of this directory is to help people find SCD services and resources. Users can search for Providers/Sickle Cell Centers, Non-Profits/Associations/Foundations, and Support Groups within their state.
Stepping Up: A 2-part video series for teenagers & young adults with SCD shares the stories of Kevin and Calvanay about their transition to adult care, how it has affected them and how they’ve overcome challenges. Spanish transcripts of the videos are available online.
Provider Training Video Series: “Reducing Complications of Therapeutic Blood Transfusions in Sickle Cell Disease” is a four-part educational video series for healthcare providers. Created in collaboration with the CDC and the Georgia Health Policy Center, the training series is designed to provide information about and strategies for reducing transfusion complications in people with SCD. For CME/CNE credits, go to cdc.gov/TCEOnline, click search and type in the course number and the module title. The course number starts with a ‘WD’ and is followed by 4 numbers.
In a CDC Expert Commentary on Medscape about transfusions in SCD , Dr. Mary Hulihan, a Health Scientist in the Division of Blood Disorders at CDC discusses scenarios in which transfusions are appropriate for people with SCD, the complications associated with transfusions, and how to reduce the risk of complications from transfusions.
SCD Resources in Spanish are available on our Spanish webpage. You can find free, informative materials on SCD, such as fact sheets and infographicsin Spanish.

CDC Monitoring Projects

Early screening, diagnosis, and treatment have allowed people with SCD to live much longer, making now a more important time than ever to study health of people with SCD across their life course. The Sickle Cell Data Collection (SCDC) program collects health information about people with SCD to study long-term trends in diagnosis, treatment, and healthcare access for people with SCD in the United States. The program will help inform policy and healthcare standards that improve and extend the lives of people with SCD. Check out the program’s website!

Learn more about CDC’s SCD surveillance (monitoring) history through a fact sheet that allows you to compare each project using information about data sources, participating states, and accomplishments of each project.

The Transfusions Complications Monitoring project is a collaboration between CDC, Georgia State University, University of Florida, and the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland that aims to identify ways to decrease health problems from blood transfusions, and to show that reducing these problems improves overall health for patients. The project’s ultimate goal is to improve the quality and length of life for people with SCD, thalassemia, and other red blood cell disorders.

What You Can Do

Spread the word! We encourage you to share our new resources with your friends and colleagues. We will be sharing messages about National Sickle Cell Awareness Month on Twitter. We invite you to follow, re-post, and re-tweet @CDC_NCBDDD! For more information about SCD, please visit CDC’s SCD website.