Everyone who needs a kidney should get a kidney no matter their income background race or where they live change Starts Here and Now every day people are walking the Walk of kidney equity for all like Dr danushka mahat an assistant professor with the Institute of Health equity research at the Ian school of
Medicine at Mount Si I and others who work at the VA it is really an honor to be able to take care of veterans and I feel so much pride but also Joy it’s such a special population of our country to take care of our veteran population
Is facing just a a range of social determinant factors and inequities but sometimes on a heightened level particularly veterans who are homeless particularly veterans who have unstable housing everything from whether or not the environment that you live in has predisposed you to two of the most common causes of chronic kidney disease
That’s diabetes and hypertension to whether you live in a neighborhood that has greater or less access to a transplant center to the types of resources that you might need to even be fully evaluated for kidney transplantation all of these things matter the attention to some of the nuances about guiding a patient through
That for example programs like having a navigator that some transplant centers that are nonv affiliated have implemented might be really helpful and uniquely helpful for our veteran population for my veterans right now I’m still sharing nkf resources for them I mean every person gets kidney.org this is how you’re going to find this
Information about diet Etc I would love to see sort of instead of Reinventing the wheel more of a tailoring of resources within major organizations that have already put effort into creating some of those resources and then disseminating them widely through the VA so that our veterans also know what their supports can be
