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  • Year in Review
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SOCIAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES IN 2021

Staying on track to achieve racial justice in kidney care

Nature Reviews Nephrology volume 18, pages 72–73 (2022)Cite this article

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The dramatic increase in advocacy and scholarly work on the impact of structural racism on health inequities that began in 2020 has been sustained in the past year. In response to the call for action on these issues, the nephrology community has developed policy-based mitigation strategies and continues to examine our role in promoting health equity and justice in the care of patients with kidney disease.

Key advances

  • The nephrology community is leading by example to address harms of racialized medical practices in clinical algorithms by removing the long-standing inclusion of a Black race modifier in equations to estimate kidney function in patients7.

  • Efforts to ensure equitable access to transplantation and equitable outcomes for all transplant patients will remain unrealized unless we acknowledge and counter systemic, institutional and interpersonal racism6,8.

  • Associations between racial disparities in the built environment, such as the integrity of community water sources, can be linked with racial disparities between Black and white patients diagnosed with kidney failure9.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA

    Dinushika Mohottige

  2. UNC Kidney Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Keisha Gibson

Authors
  1. Dinushika Mohottige
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  2. Keisha Gibson
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Correspondence to Keisha Gibson.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Mohottige, D., Gibson, K. Staying on track to achieve racial justice in kidney care. Nat Rev Nephrol 18, 72–73 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-021-00520-5

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