Day 13 · Planned
Bone Marrow Awareness Day — Bellingham
Bellingham, WA
Bellingham’s four towns and a wider donor search
This day on the route
- Planned date
- The day
- Awareness Day
- Planned walking
- No planned route miles
Day 13: planned Awareness Day in Bellingham, with no planned route miles. A public time and meeting location must be confirmed separately.
A planned Awareness Day follows the Bellingham walking stage. The city grew from four bayside communities; the day’s reading explores how transplant teams search for donors.
Bellingham grew from four earlier bayside communities: Whatcom, Sehome, Bellingham and Fairhaven. The city’s consolidation chart shows a series of mergers, culminating in the city of Bellingham in 1903. The names survive in the local geography, including Fairhaven on the approach from Chuckanut Drive.
Day 13 is the third planned Awareness Day, with no planned route miles. Its place in the itinerary separates the coastal walking chapter from the next stages toward Custer, Blaine and the international border.
One useful subject for further reading is matching. NMDP explains that HLA information is inherited and that ancestry can affect the search for an unrelated donor. It also describes advances allowing some patients to receive a transplant from a donor who is not a full match. More potential donors give transplant teams a wider search, alongside the treatment options that continue to develop.
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.
- Bellingham consolidation flowchart — checked Sep 5, 2026
- Matching blood stem cell donors and patients — checked Sep 5, 2026
