Network Interventions to Reduce Disparities in Living Kidney Donation

The overall goal is to understand the process and assist participants who do not receive unsolicited offers to be evaluated as a living kidney donor in initiating and effectively conducting these critical conversations with participants kin and friends. In the search intervention, based on what they can tell investigators about the number, type, perceived health, perceived relationship, and potential willingness to donate, as well as analyses of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) investigators will counsel them on which members of participants family and friendship networks appear most biomedically promising as donors among the subset of these individuals that participants have not ruled out for known medical or perceived relationship reasons. In the rhetorical intervention, investigators will test non-coercive, promising verbal scripts that have proven promising in preliminary tests in vignette experiments in online and phone surveys.

AIM 1: Survey transplant candidates about their social network and transplant-related attitudes, knowledge, and characteristics; and randomize participants into one of two interventions or a control group.

AIM 2: Send network member participants a survey that measures potential donor attributes that are hypothesized to influence donation decisions, such as medical contraindications, blood type, health insurance status, and barriers to living donation.

AIM 3: Test whether participant social networks and interventions affect donation outcomes using medical records and follow-ups provided by Penn and UAB. Investigators will create the first predictive model of potential donor evaluation and actual donation. This information is critical to improve clinical practice and efforts to ethically influence the living donor search process.

Inclusion criteria

• Are KT candidates at the University of Pennsylvania or University of Alabama-Birmingham OR were identified by KT candidate from the University of Pennsylvania or University of Alabama-Birmingham as a network member
• Are adults aged 18 or older
• Are able and willing to consent to participation in the survey

Exclusion criteria

• Person is not a KT candidate at University of Pennsylvania or University of Alabama-Birmingham OR was NOT identified by KT candidate from University of Pennsylvania or University of Alabama-Birmingham as a network member
• Individuals who are not yet 18
• Participant does not speak English