Day 12 · Planned
PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center
2901 Squalicum Parkway, Bellingham, WA
Bellingham’s long history of community care
This day on the route
- Planned date
- The day
- Walking
- Planned walking
- 9 miles
Day 12: nine planned walking miles into Bellingham, ending in the St. Joseph Medical Center area. No hospital-hosted activity or patient access is announced.
Route overview, not turn-by-turn directions.
The planned nine-mile leg reaches the St. Joseph Medical Center area. Its community-care history begins in 1891 and continues through the cancer center on Squalicum Parkway.
PeaceHealth’s history begins with two Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace traveling west in 1890 to establish a hospital. St. Joseph opened in Bellingham in 1891. The organization’s account follows the expansion of that community work into a wider regional health system, giving this stop a history that predates modern transplant medicine.
The St. Joseph Cancer Center on Squalicum Parkway brings treatment and support services into that continuing history of community care. Its work places the medical history of this stop in the present as well as the nineteenth century.
For patients who need donated blood-forming cells, transplant teams consider several possible sources, including relatives, unrelated donors and cord blood. NMDP describes the search as clinical work undertaken by the patient’s team, with more potential registry donors still needed. A broader pool of potential donors gives that clinical search more possibilities to consider.
The itinerary places a nine-mile walking stage here, then a separate Bellingham Awareness Day. From the medical-center area, the next chapter continues toward Custer, Blaine and the international border.
Choose where you live
Continue to the official registry that serves you. It decides eligibility, handles registration and contacts you if you may match a patient.
United States — NMDP
NMDP accepts new registry members who are 18 to 35, live in the US, its territories or freely associated states, can meet NMDP’s health guidelines, and are not already registered through another US organization. Joining happens at home: you answer a few questions on NMDP’s site, they mail you a free cheek-swab kit, and you swab and send it back. Once you are a member you stay listed until you are 61 unless you ask to be removed — 61 is when NMDP takes you off, not an age at which you can join. NMDP makes the final eligibility decision.
Check the listed age range
NMDP — Join the registry · checked Sep 1, 2026
Prefer to text? Send JADA to 61474 and NMDP will take it from there.
Browse all official registry options
Eligibility rules can change. Confirm the current requirements with the official registry before joining.
Give to the Jada Bascom Foundation
Choose a symbolic amount or enter your own in Givebutter. Your donation supports JBF’s work wherever it is needed most.
Sponsoring a mile, a day or a stop is a way of describing a gift to the Jada Bascom Foundation. It does not purchase anything on the route.
$100.00 is a suggested amount. Confirm or change it in Givebutter.
Sources
Local history and background reading for this stop.
- Our community history in the Pacific Northwest — checked Sep 5, 2026
- St. Joseph Cancer Center — checked Sep 5, 2026
- Finding a blood stem cell donor — checked Sep 5, 2026
