Written by: Laxmi Keerthi Ravula, BHMS, MPH I have been working in the Houston Methodist Research Institute’s Patient Engagement Lab for almost two years as a Clinical Research Coordinator. I joined this lab to improve health and prevent disease through applying patient-engaged techniques and access to education to address health disparities. I strongly believe in applying the power of effective communication and research methods to benefit patients and the public. I think we can all …
LifeGift and Houston Methodist Building a Collaborative for Improved Organ Donation and Transplantation
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) issued a call to action in February 2022, urging a comprehensive overhaul of the national organ donation program within five years. Recognizing the critical need for reform, LifeGift in collaboration with Houston Methodist, is coordinating efforts to improve our system with the creation of the Deceased Organ Donation Performance Improvement Collaborative. This initiative, which is generously sponsored by Sanofi, includes representation from all transplant centers in …
What is the Value to Listening and Amplifying the Voices of Patient and Donors?
Author: Dr. Amy Waterman, PhD FAST Progress in Transplantation. 2024;34(1-2):6-6. doi:10.1177/15269248241241164 Our community of transplant patients and living donors continually teach me important lessons, both personally and professionally. The most important lesson I learned was to remember that I have never lived life as a person in need of transplant, a transplanted patient, or a living donor. Because of this, I cannot intimately know the fears and challenges of transplant, nor always how best to …
Celebrating Excellence in Transplant Research: Dr. Andrea M. Meinders’ Journey and Achievements
Written by Solaf Al Awadhi, MBBS, MSc., Scientific Writer Dr. Andrea Meinders, currently a general surgery resident at Houston Methodist Hospital, embarked on a two-year research fellowship in June 2022. This fellowship, funded by the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund through the Texas A&M Academy of Physician Scientists, was carried out at the Patient Engagement Research Laboratory. With an undergraduate degree in Psychology and a passion for surgery, Dr. Meinders quickly became an integral part of the research …
How outdated stigmas can limit living organ donation
Written by Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger No one has ever accused me of being a drug addict. In fact, no one has ever even suggested I drank too much or was impaired in any way due to substance use. I am a pretty reliable, law-abiding, sober person. But in 2017 when I started the process to donate my kidney to a woman I read about in the newspaper, the suspicion of drug abuse almost derailed …
Why seeing a therapist almost kept me from donating my kidney?
Written by Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger When I reached out to the Mayo Clinic in 2017 to see if I could be a living donor for a kidney patient I had read about in the newspaper, I had no idea if I would qualify. First, of course, I didn’t know if I would be a blood and HLA tissue type match. I also wondered if I was too old (I had just turned 60) or …
What if one of my children needs a kidney?
Written by Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger When I told people I was planning to donate a kidney to a woman I read about in the newspaper many asked “But what if one of your children (or your husband) needs a kidney someday? You won’t be able to save their life.” The answer for me was easy. I was already 61. The odds that one of my two adult children or my husband, none of whom …
Legislative Efforts to Support Living Kidney Donors
Written by Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger Donating a kidney can be expensive. While the recipient’s insurance – whether through a private company or Medicare – fully covers the donor’s medical, surgical, and hospital expenses, it does not cover out-of-pocket costs. This means many who donate some distance from their home town are left to cover their own expenses for transportation, meals, and lodging. Insurance also fails to compensate donors for the time required for evaluation, …
Abundant: First-Person Stories about Living Organ Donation
Written by Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger Laurie Lee is an altruistic kidney donor and facilitator of the Kidney Champion Program at Northwestern Medicine, a program that teaches kidney patients strategies to help find a living donor. She is also the host of Donor Diaries, a podcast about the beauty and messiness of living organ donation. For the past three years she has been working as a producer and content consultant on Abundant, a documentary featuring first-person stories from …
2023: A Year of Expansion & Prosperity
Written by Dr. Solaf Al Awadhi, Scientific Writer We can’t believe we have only been in Houston, Texas together for 2 years. This year has been a year of expansion of staff, partnerships, and national policy leadership for the Patient Engagement Research Lab. This year Dr. Waterman welcomed seven wonderful new members to the lab, to expand her core amazing team of faculty, staff, and interns. She acknowledges the team by saying, ‘You are a critical …
Five Year Transplant Anniversary
By Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger Early last month, I sat on a sunny patio at one of my favorite restaurants in Kansas City enjoying brunch with two of my favorite people – Deb Porter Gill and her boyfriend George, who was in town from Florida visiting family. No one watching us – talking animatedly about friends, family, politics, religion, movies, books, vacations – would have guessed at the permanent bond we share. Almost exactly five …
Beyond direct donation: what if your friends and family don’t match?
By Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger As a living kidney donor, I often hear from people who have recently been diagnosed with End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) or have a relative who is a kidney patient. These patients have usually been given little information about the advantages of living kidney donation and almost no guidance on how to maximize their chances of finding a donor. Many providers, who are highly experienced in the medical and surgical …
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: How Can it Help Improve Transplant Care?
Are you interested in learning about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: How Can it Help Improve Transplant Care? Click the link below. At the conclusion of this session, participants should be able to: • Identify how to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop risk indices to predict transplant success. • Distinguish characteristics of kidney patients more likely to drop out of transplant evaluation. • List 3 structural and community-level factors that are associated …
Learn more about Dr. Amy Waterman and her career journey
Houston Methodist Academic Institute Human Resources presents: A Virtual Fireside Chat with Dr. Amy Waterman. Watch the video to learn more about Dr. Waterman’s background, career journey, and current projects.
Searching for a donor – tips that work
By Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger Whenever someone hears my story about becoming an altruistic kidney donor they are astounded. You mean you read about your recipient in the newspaper and you decided to give away a kidney? How random is that? In some ways, the story is even more random that most people realize. I read about a woman who needed a kidney in my local Jewish weekly, the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, the last week of …
It takes a village part 1: One more new surgeon:
My friend Joe Sinacore and I work in the field of kidney transplantation together, he in New Jersey and me in Houston. One evening we ate dinner together and he shared, “My taxi driver really wants to help his son Parsa, an incoming high school senior, get into medical school.” He explained that Peter Rajabi, his driver from the airport, had told him that most hospitals had stopped offering many opportunities to high school and …
Our lab celebrates the Rising Stars program
Healthcare institutions must develop new approaches to educate and inspire a diverse group of individuals to seek careers in healthcare. The Rising Stars Summer Enrichment program at Houston Methodist was developed to increase the confidence of high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue careers in medicine and to build a pipeline for supporting these individuals. Listen to Dr. Waterman and the students discuss the program and how it’s working!
Transplant patients help each other prevent cancer
An article written by Dr. Waterman was recently featured on the Sage Perspectives website. It discussed how Transplant Recipients’ International Organization (TRIO) approached Dr. Waterman to help design an online tool for kidney transplant patients who are at an increased risk of developing cancer. Dr. Waterman partnered with other medical professionals, health literacy experts, and members of the TRIO community. The resulting website (Post-Transplant Cancer Project) allows visitors to manage their cancer risk by learning about: …
Mentoring program to promote inclusivity in biomedical research
The Patient Engagement Research Lab is pleased to announce that LaShara Davis has been awarded a grant through the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) through her involvement in the Obesity Health Disparities program (OHD) which focuses on obesity prevention, treatment and community-based interventions. “I am excited to have the opportunity to expand my research to include obesity, which is the single-most intervenable factor leading to chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and ultimately …
A living donor’s thoughts on a new calculator for hypertension risk
Written by Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger Of all the potential risks facing living kidney donors, three inter-related conditions are typically top of mind – diabetes, hypertension, and chronic kidney disease. Transplant centers attempt to screen for all three risk factors, typically using pre-determined numerical cut-offs to decide who will be accepted and who will be rejected as a donor. Donor candidates are given some information and some say in how these numbers determine their status, …