Toward Equity in Living Donation: Empowering Teams for Change

Pre-emptive kidney transplantation has the advantage of longer patient and graft survival, as well as the avoidance of the risks, complications and lifestyle restrictions associated with dialysis.¹ Living donor transplants are more likely to be carried out before the need for dialysis than deceased donor transplants as they are associated with a shorter waiting time.² However, there are significant age, ethnic, socio-economic, and geographic disparities in the utilisation of living kidney donation in the UK.³

In this webinar, Mr Frank Dor explores some of the disparities experienced by Black and Ethnic Minorities in accessing pre-emptive living donation. He is joined by Dr Dela Idowu and Gillian King from the community organisation GOLD (Gift of Living Donation) as they discuss the organisations Peer Buddy Scheme. This scheme aims to empower Black kidney patients by providing them with information about the process of living donation from people from their own community with similar lived experiences.

References

1. Isaac K, Umberto M, Knight S.R, Reshma R.M, Pengel L.H.M, Dor. F.J.M.F. Pre-emptive living donor kidney transplantation: A public health justification to change the default. Frontiers in Public Health. Volume 11 (1). 2023. 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1124453

2. NHS Blood & Transplant. Annual Report on Kidney Transplantation 2022/2023. https://nhsbtdbe.blob.core.windows.net/umbraco-assets-corp/32738/nhsbt-kidney-transplantation-report-2223.pdf

3. Wu. D.A, Robb M.L, et al. Barriers to living donor kidney transplantation in the United Kingdom: a national observational study, Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, Volume 32 (5). 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/ndt/gfx036

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• Frank J.M.F. Dor

  Consultant Transplant Surgeon and Clinical Lead for Transplantation

  Read biography
  Frank J.M.F. Dor

  Consultant Transplant Surgeon and Clinical Lead for Transplantation Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

  Role and Location
  Consultant Transplant Surgeon, Clinical Lead for Transplantation at Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.  

  Education
  Frank has an extensive academic background including a MD-cum laude in Transplantation from Erasmus University Rotterdam, a PhD in Transplantation Immunology from Harvard Medical School. He was trained as general surgeon and later abdominal transplant surgeon at Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, where he worked as a consultant transplant surgeon and surgical director kidney transplantation until he moved to London in 2016.

  Research  
  Mr Dor’s research interests include Living organ donation, especially live kidney donation, ranging from surgical technical topics, ethics, psychosocial and informed consent to donor screening and follow up. He is also interested in Ischemia reperfusion injury, including reconditioning strategies (such as ischemic conditioning, machine perfusion, cellular therapies, dietary preconditioning, immunomodulation), Kidney transplantation (varying from technical aspects, immunology to ethics, with a focus on pre-emptive live donor kidney transplantation, inequities in access to transplantation and innovative solutions to solve this), Evidence-based medicine in transplantation and Social media.

  Memberships  
  In addition to his clinical work, Frank has held key leadership roles within the European Society for Organ Transplantation (ESOT). He served as Chair of ESOT’s education committee, as Hesperis Course chair, ESOT councillor (ambassadorship and communication, Lead of the Social Media Ambassador programme). Currently he is Treasurer of ESOT, Director of the ESOT Live Donor Nephrectomy Course, Council Member of the British Transplantation Society, Chair of the BTS Chapter of Surgeons, Deputy-Chair of the Kidney Advisory Group of NHS Blood and Transplant, member of the European Surgical Association, Chair of the Clinical Ethics Committee of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and UK national delegate of the UEMS Division for Transplant Surgery. He is an advisor to the Peter Morris Centre for Evidence in Transplantation. He has been Senior Secretary of the UEMS Division for Transplant Surgery and Secretary General of the European Society for Surgical Research (ESSR). Frank is president of the thematic federation “Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity” of the UEMS and serves as Editor in Chief of European Surgical Research, Academic Editor of PLOSOne, Associate Editor of Transplantation and the World Journal of Transplantation.

• Dr Dela Idowu

  Executive Director and Founder of GOLD

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  Dr Dela Idowu

  Executive Director and Founder of GOLD GOLD

  Dr Dela Idowu is the Executive Director and Founder of Gift of Living Donation (GOLD) an organisation that works to raise awareness of living donation in the Black African Caribbean community, she set up the charity after coming forward as a living donor for her brother who had kidney failure and need a kidney transplant.

  She is the author of ‘More Than a Match’, a book that narrates a compelling and emotional personal account of her family’s struggle to come to terms with kidney failure, dialysis, and transplantation. She produced ‘We Are Family” a film on living kidney donation aimed to empower, educate, and encourage Black people with end stage renal disease who need a kidney transplant to have a candid conversation about living kidney donation with their loved ones. She is a member of the Kidney Advisory Group and British Transplant Society.

  GOLD has worked on several collaborative initiatives with NHSBT, Kidney Research UK, Kidney Care UK, they are currently working in collaboration with 3 London Healthcare Trusts and the London Kidney Network to implement a tailored community quality improvement model to improve equity of access to living donation and increase pre-emptive transplantation among Black African Caribbean patients.

  In May this year she was nominated for Honorary Fellowship Award from the London South Bank University for her outstanding contribution and commitment to raising awareness of kidney disease and organ donation within Black communities, as well as her enormous support and advocacy for LSBU students.

• Gillian King

  Community Engagement Manager

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  Gillian King

  Community Engagement Manager GOLD

  Gillian has been a chronic kidney disease (CKD) patient for 18 years, having been diagnosed in 2005. Gillian’s background in law has proved an excellent skillset for volunteering as a peer supporter in two hospital trusts and with the charity GOLD (Gift of Living Donation) as the Community Engagement Manager. Her day job was in Human Resource management in a College of the University of London. At Heythrop College, Gillian was responsible for the Equality Policy implementation and worked in that capacity until the College closed in 2018.

  Gillian has a keen interest in research and delivered a paper titled ‘Equality in Research’ at Heythrop College closing conference on the merits of studying Philosophers and Theologians from varied backgrounds. This paper was also delivered at the Advanced Higher Education Small and specialist institutions network, which resulted in her speaking and consulting at other institutions on race equality.

  She also co-wrote a paper with Dela Idowu from Gold, on Health Literacy and Ethnic minority populations published in the Advances in Medical Technologies and Clinical Practice (AMTCP) book series in 2018 edited by Professor Vassilios E. Papalois and Maria Theodosopoulou of Imperial College.

  More recently, Gillian has been volunteering at the London Kidney Network Health Equity Group and the LKN Leadership Forum, providing a patient’s perspective informed by her research, professional career experience and personal experiences as a patient. She has spoken previously on health equity at the launch of the London Kidney Network, to Junior doctors at Barts Health and has delivered training, through Gold, to consultants and other health care professionals on how to engage with black patients.  She is currently working on a book on Black British identity.