Harkness Fellowship examining Indigenous Australians’ access to kidney transplantation
Current topic
| Dr Alan Cass, a PhD student at the Menzies School of Health Research and researcher at the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal and Tropical Health, has been awarded a Harkness Fellowship to continue his research in the United States. He will undertake a cross-national study of the barriers facing Indigenous Australians and Native Americans with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) who need a kidney transplant. He is a clinical nephrologist at the Royal Darwin Hospital and a member of the ‘Sharing the True Stories’ team looking at the impact of miscommunication in the delivery of health care to Indigenous patients with ESRD. His PhD explores health inequalities in Australia, with a focus on renal disease. |
Nine Harkness Fellowships are awarded each year to scholars in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to allow them to spend up to 12 months in the US. The Fellowships are managed by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports independent research on health and social issues. The Fund’s goals are to improve access to health care for disadvantaged groups and to improve quality of care. It aims to build a network of policy-oriented health care researchers and to stimulate innovative thinking on health policy and practice in the United States and other industrialised countries.
Native Americans, like Indigenous Australians, have very high rates of renal disease and receive relatively few transplants, the most effective treatment for ESRD. A successful transplant confers a better quality of life, a longer life expectancy and results in lower costs than does the alternative, long-term dialysis.
Similar factors may well influence transplantation for both Native Americans and Indigenous Australians. Social determinants-poverty, lack of education and other disadvantage-play an important part, but cultural issues also profoundly affect how Indigenous people relate to the health care system.
Dr CASs will use US databases pertaining to dialysis and renal transplantation. He will examine how people have interacted with the system and whether they have had access to transplants. He plans to use the data to document any disparities and then to interview service providers, policy makers and, of course, Native Americans themselves, to discover whether or not there are systemic barriers to access.
The predominant aim of his research is to develop strategies that will help improve equity in access to transplantation for Indigenous Australians.
Alan CASs MBBS FRACP Grad. Dip. Clin. Epidemiology
PhD student, Menzies School of Health Research
Nephrologist, Royal Darwin Hospital
