Nashville Selected for National Kidney Meeting
Vanderbilt University, Tennessee Kidney Foundation and ESRD Network 8 Collaborate with American Association of Kidney Patients for 2015 Meeting
TAMPA, FL – The Board of Directors of the American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP) announced today that Nashville, Tennessee has been selected as the location for AAKP’s 41stNational Patient Meeting, to be held on September 25th-27th. The meeting is a collaborative effort with support from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the Tennessee Kidney Foundation, andEnd-Stage Renal Disease Network 8, Inc.
“Nashville is a national center of excellence for medical research, music and American culture and our collaborative partners have been exceptional in welcoming AAKP and kidney patients nationwide to come to their great city,” stated Paul T. Conway, AAKP President and a transplant recipient. “We look forward to our time in Nashville and our discussions on how to improve both medical outcomes for kidney patients and the effectiveness of advocacy for more research and living donation.”
The AAKP National Patient Meeting will host over 25 distinguished panelists and speakers, including top faculty from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, as well as health care professionals, researchers, patient experts and public policy leaders from across the nation. AAKP is collaborating with Home Dialyzors United (HDU) to provide additional perspective in the area of home therapies. Dr. Doug Johnson, Vice Chairman of the Board for Dialysis Clinic, Inc. (DCI), who has been instrumental in developing tools to ensure excellent patient outcomes, will serve as a keynote speaker.
The meeting will feature national health care and public policy experts discussing:
- Breakthroughs in prevention and treatment research
- Key advances in pharmaceuticals and technology – especially home hemodialysis
- The critical importance of keeping kidney patients fully-employed
- National legislation and policy impacting living kidney donors and patients
- Social media as key policy advocacy tool for patients and caregivers
- How patients can better communicate with health care professionals
- Keys to maintaining health, nutrition and wellness
- Emergency preparedness and kidney patients
- Federal government efforts to increase “patient engagement’ in health care
Patients and their caregivers will gain information and advocacy skills they need to be even more effective in using their voices and experiences to improve access and quality of care for kidney patients and to influence public policy decisions. Professionals attending the meeting will be able to receive continuing education (CE) credits.
“The speakers at the AAKP National Patient Meeting represent many important facets of kidney care – the patients, service providers, health care and public policy,” said Gary Green, AAKP Executive Director. “We feel that all these voices need to be heard as we work toward our common goal of improving overall patient care.”
For more information on the 2015 AAKP National Patient Meeting, as well as sponsorship and vendor opportunities, please contact Diana Clynes, AAKP’s Director of Programs & Services atdclynes@aakp.org or call 813-400-2391.
Kidney care, including dialysis, costs the American taxpayer over $35 billion per year, an estimated 7% of the Federal budget. An estimated 26 million Americans suffer from chronic kidney disease (CKD), including more than 600,000 individuals who suffer from complete renal failure, a figure that includes those on dialysis or have a functioning kidney transplant. Today, there are 109,439 people on the kidney transplant waiting list, including 1,871 in Tennessee alone.
The founding members of AAKP were directly involved in the formation of the Federal End Stage Renal Disease program which passed in October 1972. In additional to a broad range of relationships in the United States Congress and among allied kidney organizations, AAKP works very closely with Federal agencies and senior leaders across government to inform policy and regulatory decisions related to kidney disease care and prevention as well as dialysis and kidney transplantation. These agencies include the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).
Over the next several months, AAKP will join with many other allies from the health care and kidney community to make patient perspectives better known among lawmakers and their staffs.AAKP will be joining with theAmerican Society of Nephrology(ASN), theRenal Physicians Association(RPA), theAlliance for Home Dialysis, theNational Renal Administrators Association(NRAA) and several other national organizations.
AAKP is a voluntary non-profit organization founded by kidney patients, which for more than 45 years, has been dedicated to improving the quality of life of kidney patients through education, advocacy and the fostering of patient communities. The programs offered by AAKP inform and inspire patients and their families to better understand their condition, adjust more readily to their circumstances, and assume more normal, productive lives in their communities.
