Brendan Lovasik, BS, a student who has been working with NUTORC for the last year just received a Fulbright Award to study transplant policy in Europe.  Read more about it here. 

Research and Awards:

R01Grant: A2ALL- Patient Safety System Improvements in Living Donor Liver Transplantation.
Funded by National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
Principal Investigators: Daniela Ladner, MD and Donna Woods, EdM, PhD

R03 Grant: Quality of Informed Consent for Adult-to-Adult Living Donor Liver Transplantation Funded by National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease & National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Principal Investigator: Elisa Gordon, PhD

Recent Publications:

Gordon EJ, Bergeron A, McNatt G, Friedewald J, Wolf MS, Abecassis MM. Are Informed Consent Forms for Organ Transplantation and Donation Too Difficult to Read? Clinical Transplantation. 2011; In Press.

Lora C, Gordon EJ, Sharp LK, Fischer MJ, Gerber BS, Lash J.  Progression of Chronic Kidney Disease in Hispanics: Potential Roles of Health Literacy, Acculturation, and Social Support. American Journal of Kidney Diseases 2011; In press.

Skaro A, Wang E, Lyuksemburg V, Kang R, Feinglass J, Holl, J, Abercassis M. A Comprehensive Risk Assessment of Mortality Following Donation after Cardiac Death Liver Transplant - An Analysis of the National Registry.  Journal of Hepatology. 2011(In Press). PMID: 21338639.

Robinson JK, Turrisi R, Mallett KA, Stapleton J, Boone SL, Kim N, Riyat NV, Gordon EJ. Efficacy of an Educational Intervention With Kidney Transplant Recipients to Promote Skin Self-examination for Squamous Cell Carcinoma Detection. Archives of Dermatology.2011(In Press).  PMID: 21339418.

Gordon EJ, Lash JP. A Timely Change in CKD Delivery: Promoting Patient Education. American Journal of Kidney Diseases. 2011;57(3):375-7.  PMID: 21335248.

Jay CL, Lyuksemburg V, Ladner DP, Wang E, Caicedo JC, Holl JL, Abecassis MM, Skaro AI. Ischemic Cholangiopathy After Controlled Donation After Cardiac Death Liver Transplantation: A Meta-analysis. Annals of Surgery. 2011;253(2):259-64. PMID: 21245668.

NUTORC Workgroups

Transplantation Communication
The Transplantation Communication Workgroup (TCW) is a collaboration of Northwestern University faculty from the Center for Healthcare Studies and the Division of Organ Transplantation. The TCW focuses on research to advance scientific knowledge of the role of the communication process in organ donation and transplantation. Communication between candidates, recipients, donors and the transplant team is complex, compounded by unknown risks, and fraught with ethical concerns. The communication process is shaped in large part by socio-cultural factors and power dynamics; therefore, facilitating communication can help reduce disparities. Our group examines issues including health literacy, numeracy, and informed consent in kidney, liver and other organ systems. By describing current practices, constructing measures to assess knowledge, and developing innovative interventions to improve communication, the TCW strives to improve donor and recipient decision-making, ensure ethically sound clinical practice, and ultimately improve long-term health outcomes.

Transplantation Quality of Life
Quality of life (QOL) is a multi-dimensional concept that refers to an individual’s usual or expected physical, emotional, and social well-being. Similarly, health-related QOL refers to the subjective experience and well-being of a patient as impacted by a medical condition or its treatment, often assessed by the patient’s self-report using standardized questionnaires. At its broadest, QOL encompasses not only disease symptoms and functional consequences, but also more subjective domains such as life satisfaction, happiness, and the value that one places on life at any given time. Notably, such patient-reported outcomes are increasingly becoming emphasized in clinical trials in other areas of medicine. With increased rates of survival for many child and adult transplant populations, there is an increasing focus on the QOL of both organ recipients and live organ donors. Formal, systematic QOL assessment of patients can serve as a useful gauge of treatment success, assist in the identification of long term complications that should continue to be monitored by medical personnel, or identify potential teaching and learning moments where health promotion interventions could be implemented. The QOL Workgroup consists of collaborative group of NU investigators from the Division of Organ Transplantation, Department of Pediatrics, Department of Medical Social Sciences, Department of Medicine, and the Center for Healthcare Studies.

Transplantation Risk Assessment/Economic
The Risk Assessment/Economic Workgroup is a collaboration between the Center for Healthcare Studies, the Division of Organ Transplantation and other interested parties that focuses on research of risk assessment to determine effective predictors of outcomes in organ donation and transplantation. In addition to patient outcomes the workgroup also focuses on healthcare costs and reimbursement issues resulting from donation and transplantation from the payer, patient, and societal perspectives. We endeavor to improve donor and recipient decision-making resulting in high quality, cost-effective long-term health outcomes.

Transplantation Safety Outcomes
The objective of the Transplantation Safety Outcomes Group (TSOG) is to promote a systematic approach to the study of safety within transplantation. Moreover, the mission is to enhance the provision of care to the transplant patient through the development of a comprehensive research program which focuses on outcomes and interventions related to the safety of transplantation. Areas of focus include:

• Identification of safety risks
• Assessment of the effectiveness of regulatory guidelines
• Organizational workflow optimization and safety
• Development of safety metrics for performance measurement
• Clinician Communication

Transplantation Database
The goal of the Transplant Database Group is to provide streamlined data for all of the NUTORC workgroups and coordinate existing transplantation data sources to allow for advances in research and data analysis.