The Global Kidney Health Atlas
The Global Kidney Health Atlas (GKHA), part of the ISN Closing The Gaps CKD initiative, is co-chaired by Professor David Johnson (University of Queensland, Australia) and Dr Aminu Bello (University of Alberta, Canada). The purpose is to systematically evaluate the current state of readiness, capacity and competence for delivering kidney health care globally.
World nations are being pushed toward Universal Health Care (UHC). It is unclear what this would mean for chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients and the readiness of countries and regions on the specifics of CKD care organization to accomplish UHC for the growing number of CKD patients.
The GKHA project will collate data on the global status of CKD care structures and organization towards achieving UHC, and devise policy implications for including CKD in the global NCDs agenda.
The specific objective is to define key gaps in specific areas and regions and help develop and implement regional and national strategies to address them in the long term. With repeated surveys over time, there will be a scorecard͛ or ability to track progress.
The first iteration of the survey will be launched in the second quarter of 2016. The initial results will be presented at the World Congress of Nephrology 2017 in Mexico City.
The ISN Regional and national leaderships will play a key role in successfully collecting and reporting data. The intended survey audience will be at least three key stakeholders from each country including, national nephrology society leadership, policymakers involved directly with the organization of CKD care and consumer representative organization (e.g. national kidney foundation or equivalent).
The key stakeholders will be identified either directly by the ISN Regional Boards or nominated delegates (e.g. country representative on the regional board or ISN Affiliated Society contact or other networks).
