American Red Cross (ARC)

The American Red Cross (ARC) is a nonprofit humanitarian organization that was founded in 1881. The ARC is supported through donations, and its work is chiefly carried out through the efforts of volunteers who give their time and skills to support the organization’s humanitarian efforts.

One of the major responsibilities of the organization is the collection of millions of blood donations each year to ensure that blood and its by-products are available for patients who have had an accident, undergone surgery, or suffer from certain conditions, such as sickle cell disease or cancer. According to the ARC, it supplies approximately 40 percent of blood donations in the United States. While most people see the chief role of the organization as providing disaster relief, the ARC has also taken on the responsibility for educating the public about safety, offering training in first aid, automated external defibrillator (AED) use, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), lifeguarding, babysitting and child care, basic life support, and emergency preparedness. The ARC is also involved in supporting military families by being an active presence in military hospitals, working with veterans, and offering assistance to family members of service members during deployments and emergency situations.

Brief History

The ARC was established to alleviate human suffering caused by wars and natural disasters. It was founded by nurse Clara Barton (1821–1912) and a group of her friends and acquaintances on May 21, 1881, in Washington, DC. Barton had been impressed by the work of the organization that would eventually become known as the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had been established by Jean-Henri "Henry" Dunant (1828–1919) in Switzerland in 1863 as a means of advocating for humane treatment during armed conflicts. Barton translated her beliefs on humanitarian work into action on the battlefields of the American Civil War, where she came to be known as the "angel of the battlefield."

During the war, Barton was heavily involved in garnering American support for the First Geneva Convention, held in 1864 and ratified by the United States in 1882. After the war ended in 1865, Barton obtained authority from President Abraham Lincoln to establish the Office of Correspondence with the Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army, allowing her to identify twenty-two thousand Union soldiers who had been declared missing. Barton served as the head of the ARC for twenty-three years before resigning in 1904 to be replaced by Mabel Thorp Boardman.

The ARC was granted a federal charter by the US Congress in 1900. In 1910, the ARC Nursing Service was established, and the Rural Nursing Program was created two years later. In 1914, there were 107 local chapters of the ARC, but World War I caused those numbers to skyrocket, climbing to 3,864 chapters by 1918. The Junior Red Cross was established in 1917 as a way to educate young people about humanitarian responsibilities. The postwar years led to a new emphasis on services for veterans, safety training, accident prevention, home care, and nutrition education.

The influenza pandemic of 1918 and the Mississippi River flood of 1927 gave the ARC its first real opportunities to provide large-scale domestic disaster relief. The ARC was also instrumental in alleviating suffering during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The United States entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. During the war, the ARC mobilized more than 104,000 nurses, dispatched 27 million packages to American and Allied prisoners of war, and collected 13.3 million pints of blood for use by injured service members.

In 1948, the ARC established its blood program for civilians. That blood supply was threatened in the 1980s and 1990s by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) during the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and measures were implemented to ensure that blood donations were not contaminated by HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C viruses, or various other viruses and drugs. The ARC has received criticism because its stringency in accepting blood donations has led to a marked increase in the number of deferred donors, many of whom never volunteer to donate blood again. In 2015, in response to these criticisms and in accordance with guidance from the US Food and Drug Administration, the ARC changed its policy of lifetime deferral for men who had sex with men to a one-year deferral. In 2023, the organization removed any eligibility questions pertaining to sexual orientation and eliminated the deferral for men who had sex with men.

Although its federal charter has been amended on several occasions, the ARC has adhered to its original purpose to provide domestic and international disaster relief and facilitate communication among members of the military and their families. Although not a federal agency, the ARC has always worked closely with US government agencies, particularly the armed forces and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Impact

Both within the United States and abroad, the ARC is on the scene to provide assistance during fires and weather-related disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast and caused major flooding in New Orleans in 2005. The American Red Cross is also present during crises such as the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995, and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11). Immediate aid includes the provision of clean water and first aid, while ongoing efforts involve the provision of shelter and clothing and the replacement of necessities such as prescription medications and eyeglasses. The ARC also helps victims to establish contact with family members. Since 1989, through the ARC Disaster Mental Health Services program, the ARC has provided mental health services and counseling to victims of disasters and to employees and volunteers who experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after being involved in relief efforts in disaster areas.

Working with Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations around the world, the American Red Cross is involved in humanitarian efforts in multiple countries. Since 2001, those efforts have included the Measles and Rubella Initiative, which was founded in cooperation with other international organizations and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ensure that more than one billion children in eighty developing countries have been vaccinated. The ARC itself provided technical and financial assistance to support measles and rubella vaccinations campaigns in twelve countries in Africa as a part of this initiative.

In 2010, when a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, ARC workers were involved in the global Red Cross network to provide food and clean drinking water, medical care, emergency shelter, and rubble removal. When a cholera outbreak threatened Haiti in the wake of the disaster, the ARC participated in a vaccination campaign, for which it provided 70 percent of the funding, and in the distribution of water purification tablets. Five years later, in April 2015, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake and several major aftershocks devastated Nepal, resulting in the deaths of more than eight thousand people. The ARC was there to provide aid, cash grants, kitchen supplies, blankets, and clean water.

During the 2014 outbreak of Ebola virus in West Africa, the ARC supported the relief efforts of the global Red Cross network through both financial and technical assistance. The European migration crisis began in 2015 with an influx of refugees into Europe from the Middle East who were escaping from crisis situations and war zones such as those in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Along with other international organizations in the global Red Cross network, the ARC stepped in to provide food, water, hygiene kits, baby supplies, clothing, and first aid kits. In cooperation with Red Crescent, ARC has also provided shelter, medical care, and psychosocial support to refugees. The Red Cross Restoring Family Links program has continued to help reunite families that have been separated by disasters, wars, and migration.

In addition to its international efforts in conjunction with the global Red Cross network, the ARC responds to thousands of emergencies in the United States every year, from supporting individual families following house fires to coordinating multistate relief efforts following major natural disasters. By the 2020s, increased occurrences of extreme natural disasters such as floods and wildfires, as well as the global COVID-19 pandemic, saw the ARC offering even greater levels of support.

At the same time, the ARC and its efforts continued to draw criticism, especially regarding financial transparency and accountability. In addition to some contending that the organization had often proven insufficient and dysfunctional as a humanitarian response resource, others pointed to investigations, including by members of Congress, of ARC claims about how it spends disaster donation funds.

Bibliography

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