Grant: Project Grant - PA: Patient-Oriented Research: Early-Career Investigator

Living donor kidney transplantation (LDKT) is the best treatment option for patients with kidney failure. It entails a healthy living donor (LD) donating one of their kidneys to the patient. Despite the several advantages of LDKT, rates in Canada have stagnated and most patients still receive other inferior treatment options such as dialysis and deceased donation. To better understand why this is the case, we studied current systems and noted several system-level inefficiencies and deficiencies likely causing this. We also noted that there is a lack of solid infrastructure to support LDs who provide such an important gift to society. Now, we want to advance this work and develop policy. First, we want to focus on the province in Canada with the lowest rates of LDKT. We conducted research and found several barriers to LDKT. We now want to unite existing organizations and see how their isolated efforts can be unified to develop a coherent and collaborative plan. Second, we want to see if current organizations are undermining LDKT by focusing on dialysis and deceased donation. Third, we want to better support LDs who are generally followed by family doctors. We want to obtain their perspectives and what model of care they prefer. We also want to know what family doctors think about living donation and whether they are comfortable taking care of LDs. Overall, we have developed system-level approaches to improve the health of patients with kidney failure in Canada who present a significant public health burden and have poor outcomes. We also want to better support LDs. We also think our study will help address disparities in access to LDKT and we will conduct a gender analysis to inform future work to address gender disparities in living donation.