ACTSI Trainee Receives CBPR R-Grant

Rachel Patzer, PhD, MPH, assistant professor, Emory University School of Medicine, Emory Transplant Center, is an ACTSI KL2 trainee and recently received a $1 million R24 grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. The community-based participatory research (CBPR) grant is focused on reducing and eliminating disparities in access to kidney transplantation.

Dr. Patzer is working with a coalition of more than 40 partners in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina to develop a multi-component intervention, randomize 60 dialysis facilities to receive the intervention, and evaluating the impact on transplant access and reduction in disparities. The proposed study seeks to leverage an existing academic-community collaboration with the Southeastern Kidney Transplant Coalition to identify barriers to KTx and to plan, implement and evaluate a multilevel intervention targeting ESRD patients and dialysis facility staff.   

The Southeastern Kidney Transplant (SEKTx) Coalition is an academic-community collaboration between partners in the kidney disease community who share the common goal of eliminating health disparities in access to kidney transplantation (KTx) among African American’s with End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) living in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Volunteer members of this community-based coalition include ESRD and transplant patients, dialysis facility staff and providers, transplant centers, quality improvement organizations and patient advocacy organizations. The burden of Chronic Kidney Disease and ESRD is highest in the Southeast, and yet the rate of KTx is the lowest in the nation. Further, SEKTx research suggests that racial disparities in access to KTx are concentrated in the Southeast, where African Americans are less likely to access each step in the KTx process. The long-term goal of the SEKTx Coalition is to use community-based participatory research approaches to develop, test and disseminate sustainable, community interventions improve access to KTx for African American ESRD patients.