Message from the Past-President: Dianne Geary

Dear members and prospective members,

Thank you for your involvement during my tenure as President of CBBS.  We had an interesting year, and I wanted to recap as I move to the Past-President position and support our esteemed incoming President of CBBS, Ms. Nathalie Cheng.

We opened the year in August 2025 with a Summer Seminar. Dr. Michelle Brown shared a presentation about how to set up simulations so that staff can practice low frequency- high complexity events (like massive transfusion events) without the high- stakes atmosphere.  Her presentation is still available on the CBBS website.

In October 2025, CBBS had a meet and greet at the 2025 AABB Annual Meeting in San Diego. Quite a number of attendees found their way to the in person get together, won prizes and took photos to commemorate that they were there.  We will again host a Meeting & Greet Reception at the AABB Annual Meeting in Atlanta GA on October 18, 2026.

In February 2026, we hosted the very popular CLS Webinar. I felt like a fan girl as I introduced the first three speakers: Sandra Nance, Christine Lomas-Francis and Janice Hamilton. These three amazing presenters shared investigations of antibodies of undetermined specificity.  I wrote copious notes on Sue Johnson’s presentation on the Art of the DAT. Based on her presentation I will now always make a fresh cell suspension when testing a patient DAT.  The entire CLS Webinar is available as a Course on the CBBS website.

In March 2026, CBBS had been approached to consider a merger with a complementary California blood centered organization – Blood Centers of California (BCC). Their organization is focused on advocacy while CBBS focuses on education. We discovered that by pooling our resources we could become a robust united organization. We gathered all of the information and in April 2026 brought the final decision to the most important decision makers – the CBBS membership. The CBBS membership voted to approve the process of the organizational merger, as did the BCC Board of Directors. We continue to work through the legalities of the merger and, as information develops, the CBBS Board of Directors will share our progress.

In May 2026, CBBS presented our virtual Annual Meeting. Over two days, we learned about coagulation related therapies, cybersecurity issues, updates in CAR-T technology and transfusion medicine case studies.  We also celebrated all of our award winners and attended the award lectures. Everyone who attended the Perkins-Garratty Award lecture by Dr. Claudia Cohn talked about it for days afterwards. You can see her lecture, “Platelets: From the Platypus to the Bioreactor,” in the Annual Meeting Day 1 recording in our Courses.

CBBS has also been a member of a CLS coalition to addressing the cost increase of the California CLS license renewal fees. These fees were changed by California Laboratory Field Services (LFS) with little announcement or explanation. Led by the ASCP Northern California Chapter, California CLS are working on finding common ground with the LFS on reducing the annual fee or extending the renewal back to two years. I am sure there will be more information to come.

CBBS is planning to have three virtual seminars this year in addition to our 2-day Annual Meeting – the Summer Seminar in September (free to members!), a Fall Webinar on November 14, and the CLS Webinar early 2027. It’s going to be a great year. Watch for announcements on our website and through e-mail.

As my tenure of President of CBBS has drawn to a close, I am amazed and humbled to have worked with a terrific Board or Directors and fantastic committee chairs.

Thanks for reading. Hope to see you at a CBBS event in 2026- 2027.

Warm regards,

Dianne Geary, MA, MLS (ASCP) SBB