Transplant Research for Equity and Access Team (TREAT)

The Transplant Research for Equity and Access Team (TREAT) is a multidisciplinary collaborative team of clinicians, biostatisticians, epidemiologists, behavioral scientists, and data scientists from the Regenstrief Institute, Indiana University, and Emory School of Medicine’s Department of Surgery. TREAT has two main areas of research interest, including one in 1) transplant health services and outcomes research and one more broad interest in 2) supporting health services research in general through our collaborative work across various institutions and organizations.

The main goal of TREAT is to improve equity in access to each step of the transplant process. In our earlier years, much of our work focused on the Southeast, which had the lowest rate of kidney transplantation in the nation at the time our project started, but we also have national research focused on this important topic that involves various regions in the US. We strive to achieve this goal through a better collection of surveillance data on the early steps of kidney transplantation (e.g., a referral from a dialysis facility to a transplant center and the start of the transplant evaluation process at the transplant center), conducting important epidemiologic and mixed methods analyses to determine the barriers and facilitators of access to transplant, testing the efficacy and effectiveness of interventions to improve access to transplant, and disseminating and implementing these interventions across the region and nation. Our team also has an interest in revising and developing better quality metrics for both dialysis facilities and transplant centers that incentivize transplant access for these health systems, as we know that health system barriers and health policy can often be the largest levers to change.

Fundamental to our research is the ability to communicate our research findings with the scientific community (e.g., via peer-reviewed publications) as well as to patients, the community, and the public (e.g., via Twitter, or community-based meetings such as the Southeastern Kidney Transplant Coalition and Ohio River Valley Transplant Coalition meetings).   

Helpful Links:
E-STAR Website
E-STAR dashboard
Transplant Referral Maps