Sep

International Perspectives on Access & Equity in LDKT (AM1A)

by The Centre for Living Organ Donation at UHN

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Event description

International Perspectives on Access & Equity in Living Kidney Donation & Transplantation

About this Event

Living Donation Week 2020 begins with a two-part webinar on Access & Equity in Living Kidney Donation & Transplantation.

Access to living donor kidney transplant (LDKT) is dramatically reduced among ethno-racial minority groups in Canada and other parts of the world. Building on the work of the A.C.T.I.O.N. Project, led by Dr. Istvan Mucsi, UHN and Dr. Jag Gill, Providence Health Care, this webinar will discuss barriers to living donor kidney transplantation (LDKT) in Canada and internationally.

Part one, chaired by Dr. Istvan Mucsi, will examine international perspectives on access and equity to LDKT. Featured presentations include:

Promoting access & equity in living organ donation and transplantation: Lessons from the UK
Living donor kidney transplant & African American Communities in the US
Systemic approaches to improve equity in living donor kidney transplant
Motivating Potential Living Donors of All Races/ Ethnicities to Donate: Opportunities for Intervention

Part two, chaired by Dr. Sunita Singh, Medical Director of the Living Kidney Donor Program at UHN, will present early findings from the A.C.T.I.O.N. Project and discuss ways to improve access and equity to LDKT in the Canadian context. For information on the speakers or to register for AM1B, click here.

Speakers

Gurch Randhawa PhD, FFPH, DL

Gurch Randhawa is a Professor of Diversity in Public Health and Director of the Institute for Health Research at the University of Bedfordshire, and Director of the UK Organ Donation & Transplant Research Centre. Dr. Randhawa's research is focused on the development of patient-centred care pathways in diabetes, kidney disease, transplantation, and end-of-life care amongst diverse communities. He has the privilege of working with many countries – UK, European Union, Qatar, Australia, Pakistan, and India.

The UK Organ Donation & Transplant Research Centre has carried out extensive research examining variation in donation rates among different ethnic and faith communities. It is currently carrying out a feasibility study to examine whether primary care physicians can influence organ donor registration rates.

Dr. Randhawa was recently commissioned by NHS Blood & Transplant to develop the Faith Engagement & Organ Donation Action Plan which was published in partnership with Faith Leaders. He holds a number of policy and practice positions:

Co-Chair of the European Working Party on Public Issues in Organ Donation and Transplantation
Chairman, Transplant 2020 Stakeholder Group
National Member, National Black and Minority Ethnic Transplant Alliance
National Member, Organ Donation & Transplant Strategy Steering Group, NHS Blood & Transplant, UK (current)

Tanjala Purnell PhD, MPH

Tanjala Purnell is an epidemiologist and health services researcher with over a decade of research experience related to identifying and addressing patient/family, healthcare system, and community factors influencing health and healthcare disparities for adults with cardiovascular disease risk factors, including hypertension, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes. She is an Assistant Professor of Cardiovascular Disease and Clinical Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She holds joint faculty appointments in the Johns Hopkins Departments of Surgery, Health Policy and Management, and Health Behavior and Society.

In her role as an Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute, Dr. Purnell co-leads the institute’s efforts to facilitate and recognize collaborations between communities, universities, healthcare delivery systems, government, and the private sector to build collective capacity for achieving health equity in Baltimore. She is also the Associate Director for Education and Training at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, where she leads the center’s award-winning educational and training programs for public health, nursing, and medical scholars working to advance health equity. In addition, she is the Director of community and stakeholder engagement for the Hopkins Epidemiology Research Group in Organ Transplantation, core faculty at the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, and affiliated faculty with the Bloomberg American Health Initiative and the Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research.

Dr. Purnell is a native of the Mississippi Delta and a proud alumna of Tougaloo College where she obtained her B.S. in Computer Science. She has received several national and international research honors and has published findings from her work in leading medical and public health journals, including JAMA, Health Affairs, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, American Journal of Hypertension, American Journal of Transplantation, and Diabetes Care. Dr. Purnell is deeply committed to community service, teaching, and mentoring and is the recipient of multiple Teaching Excellence Awards from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Amit Garg MD, PHD

Amit X. Garg is a professor of medicine, epidemiology, and biostatistics at Western University in London, Ontario; site director of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) Western Facility; and provincial leader of the ICES kidney, dialysis, and transplantation program. He practices general nephrology and is director of living kidney donation at the London Health Sciences Centre. Dr. Garg is active in clinical, health services, and population-health kidney research, with more than 370 peer-reviewed publications. Some examples of the impact of his research include the introduction of new information for living kidney donor candidates as part of the informed consent process; an improved understanding of the long-term outcomes of E. coli O157:H7 poisoning that has been cited in litigation to compensate victims of food or water mishandling; and findings about unsafe drug prescribing causing acute kidney injury that led to label changes by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. Garg has served on the board of the Canadian Society of Nephrology. He co-chaired the international Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes clinical practice guidelines in living kidney donation committee. He serves on the living kidney donor advisory committee of Canadian Blood Services. He is also the medical lead for the Ontario Renal Network, working for greater access to kidney transplantation. He serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases and the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. He has received a National Kidney Foundation international distinguished medal for his research contributions to renal medicine, a premier of Ontario research excellence award, and a trainee research award from the Canadian Society of Nephrology. In 2016, Dr. Garg received the Donald W. Seldin Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Nephrology.

Amy Waterman PhD

Amy D. Waterman, PhD, is a transplant innovator and a Professor in Residence at the University of California, Los Angeles within the Division of Nephrology. She is the Director of the Transplant Research and Education Center (TREC) and Deputy Director of the Terasaki Research Institute. In addition to many national transplant leadership positions, Dr. Waterman is a Fellow of the American Society of Transplantation and serves as the Research Committee Chair for the National Kidney Registry. In 2019, she received the American Society of Transplantation (AST) Clinician of Distinction Award. In 2018, she received the ClearMark Award of Distinction from the Center for Plain Language for her interactive digital application, My Transplant Coach, as well as a National Health Information Merit Award for two educational initiatives developed by Explore Transplant, a nonprofit consortium Dr. Waterman founded.

Through her research and educational initiatives, Dr. Waterman seeks to 1) understand the critical, modifiable patient, provider, and system barriers to kidney donation and 2) design interventions to overcome them. The mission of her laboratory, TREC, is to inspire and educate people about kidney transplantation and living donation and reduce racial/socio-economic disparities in transplant; its vision is to increase transplant and living donation rates and solve the kidney donor shortage. TREC focuses on translating the findings from effective clinical trials into everyday practice through collaboration with healthcare providers, transplant leaders, and policymakers.

Dr. Waterman is driven by three core beliefs: (1) transplant-eligible kidney patients deserve to make informed choices about their treatment options, especially deceased- or living-donor transplantation; (2) there are many generous people who might become deceased and living kidney donors, but they need to learn what donation involves; (3) if we all work together – kidney patients, their families and communities, and kidney healthcare professionals – our collaborative efforts can reduce the national kidney donor shortage and increase the number of people living longer with the benefit of kidney transplants.

Dr. Waterman received her PhD in Social Psychology with an emphasis on patient education and behavior change from Washington University, St. Louis, MO, where she was a faculty member in the School of Medicine from 1996 to 2013.

Isvtan Musci MD, PhD (moderator)

Istvan Mucsi, MD, PhD is a CIHR funded clinician investigator, transplant nephrologist at the Multi-Organ Transplant Program and Division of Nephrology at the University Health Network in Toronto. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at University of Toronto. Dr. Mucsi is an "expert advisor" of the Canadian Donation and Transplant Research Program.

He received his medical degree (1988) and his certification in internal medicine (1993) in Budapest, Hungary and completed nephrology training at the University of Toronto (1994-1997). Initially he had been working as a general nephrologist but later moved to Montreal to work as a transplant nephrologist at McGill University. He has moved to Toronto in April 2014.

His current research focuses on understanding and reducing ethnocultural barriers and disparities in access to kidney transplantation and living donor kidney transplantation. He has been collaborating with multiple community agencies and religious organizations develop culturally and religiously competent kidney transplant education for multiple ethnocultural communities in Ontario.

He has adapted a patient education program, called Explore Transplant, for use in Ontario. This program is a key educational tool in the Enabling Access to Kidney Transplant-Living Kidney Donation (ENAKT-LKD) provincial initiative managed by the Ontario Renal Network and Trillium Gift of Life Network. Dr. Mucsi has been co-leading the education pillar of that initiative.

He also has a strong interest in psychosocial determinants of health; sleep disorders; quality of life studies and patient reported outcomes. Dr. Mucsi will test the effectiveness of routinely measuring Patient Reported Outcome Measures in the everyday clinical care of patients with chronic kidney disease and solid organ transplant recipients, to improve clinical and quality of life outcomes.

He published more than one 140 peer reviewed articles, his H index is 46.

Submit Your Questions

We will be using Slido throughout Living Donation Week 2020. Slido allows you to submit questions in advance and in real time.

You can submit anonymously or with your name. Vote other questions up or down to determine the order in which they are asked.

Submit your questions for this session here or go to slido.com and enter event code #AM1A.

Other Sessions You Might Be Interested In

Live Donor Kidney Transplantation

Live Donor Liver Transplantation

Research & Innovation

Lifestyle

Celebration

For more information about Living Donation Week click here.

About Living Donation Week

Please note, event details subject to change.

Living Donation Week is an online event hosted by the Centre for Living Organ Donation from Sep 14-18, 2020 to raise awareness about living kidney and living liver donation, and celebrate living donors, recipients and everyone who wants to be a part their future.

For more information about Living Donation Week 2020 click here.