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‘Troubling numbers’ reveal pandemic’s toll on CVD deaths, widening race disparities

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By Regina Schaffer and Scott Buzby

In 2020, heart disease remained among the leading causes of death, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have exacerbated preexisting CVD morbidity-related racial and ethnic disparities.

As the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic began, more than 3.3 million overall deaths were registered in the U.S., which exceeded the 2019 figure by more than 500,000 deaths, according to the American Heart Association’s annual Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics update. Read the full story in Healio.

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Study: Racial gaps in home dialysis persist despite Medicare intervention

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By Shawn M. Carter
Racial gaps in home dialysis treatment still exist among patients with kidney disease, even after Medicare introduced a new payment structure to alleviate critical barriers to care, according to results of a recently published study. Congress approved the Medicare End-Stage Renal Disease prospective payment system (PPS) in 2011 to control costs and increase access to home peritoneal dialysis and hemodialysis (HHD). But despite modest increases seen in dialysis availability and patient utilization following the reform, “significant racial disparities in home dialysis remain,” Virginia Wang, PhD, faculty at the Duke University School of Medicine and lead research author, wrote in the study. Read the full story in Healio.

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Understanding and Fixing Inequities in Palliative Care and Organ Transplant

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By Angela Spivey
The Dean’s Distinguished Research Series concluded on April 20 with lectures from Kimberly Johnson, MD, professor of medicine and a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, and Lisa McElroy, MD, MS, assistant professor of surgery and population health sciences, and the Inaugural Onyekwere E. Akwari Endowed Professor in Surgery. 

The two researchers discussed their work to understand health disparities and develop health system innovations to reduce them. Johnson studies these issues in end-of-life care, and McElroy in organ transplant. Read more from Duke University School of Medicine.

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Bringing racial equity to kidney transplant evaluation

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By Ryn Thorn
African Americans are more than three times as likely to have kidney failure than Whites but four times less likely to have received a kidney transplant by one year after developing kidney failure. Researchers from the Department of Surgery at MUSC are attempting to address this inequity.

Kidney transplant surgeon Derek DuBay, M.D., and director of clinical trials David Taber, Pharm.D., developed an initiative to help to address kidney transplant disparities affecting African Americans. Read more from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC).

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HRSA Plans to Modernize US Organ Transplant Donation System to Shorten Wait Times, Improve Equity

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Citing the need to modernize the US organ transplantation framework, the Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has announced the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) Modernization Initiative. The OPTN aims to accelerate progress in areas including technology, data transparency and analytics, governance, operations, and quality improvement and innovation. Read more in this American College of Surgeons (ACS) Brief.

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What drives transplant waitlisting disparities?

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For transplant patients, psychosocial evaluations, like other measures in the transplant process, can lead to people of color facing worse outcomes.

All potential transplant candidates undergo medical and psychosocial evaluations, which are crucial in determining whether they can get a transplant. The latter are meant to ensure that a patient has adequate social support and is committed to following the recommendations of their medical team. Psychosocial evaluations also consider a patient’s history of misusing alcohol or other substances, as well as factors related to their mental health. Read more in Penn Today.

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Diagnosis, Death in Pulmonary Fibrosis Seen Earlier in Black Patients

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— Disparities in age pervasive, say researchers

Black patients with pulmonary fibrosis (PF) consistently experienced poor outcomes associated with their disease at earlier ages than other groups, including hospitalization and death, according to U.S. registry data spanning nearly two decades.

In an analysis from the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation Registry (PFFR) from 2003 to 2021, a PF diagnosis in Black individuals occurred about 10 years earlier, on average, before their white and Hispanic counterparts (P<0.001), reported Ayodeji Adegunsoye, MD, MS, of the University of Chicago Department of Medicine, and colleagues.
Read the full story in MedPage Today.

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Program aims to address inequities in transplant among Black patients

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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — A program in Chicago is helping historically underrepresented groups gain improved access to a kidney transplant, a presenter said here.

The aim of the Northwestern Medicine African American Transplant Access Program (AATAP), led by transplant surgeon Dinee C. Simpson, MD, FACS, is “to break down barriers to transplant care in the African American community through access to education, resources and quality transplant care,” according to the AATAP website.
Read the full story in Healio.

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Black patients face historically longer waiting times for kidney transplants due to outdated test

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Historically, Black patients have had to wait longer for kidney transplants than other races, in part because of an outdated test that overestimated their kidney function. Now, a new national rule will remove the test, which is seen as racially bias, in determining who gets a transplant. NBC News’ Yamiche Alcindor shares more. Watch the story on NBC Nightly News.

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