Dr. Waterman is a national transplant innovator and the Division Chief for Patient Engagement and Diversity, representing both J.C. Walter Transplant Center at Houston Methodist Hospital and the Center for Outcomes Research at the Houston Methodist Research Institute.
As a Health Services Researcher and Social Psychologist, she has conducted research to understand factors affecting access to kidney transplantation, living donation, and paired donation. Her work also examines the effectiveness of educational and multilevel interventions to improve transplantation outcomes, increase living donation rates, and reduce racial disparities in access to transplantation. She has been the Principal Investigator on 9 grants from the NIH and HRSA, has published more than 100 journal articles and has designed and tested the efficacy of a suite of innovative educational resources including mobile decision aid applications, a digital storytelling application, and texting interventions about living donation. These award-winning resources have been translated into multiple languages and delivered to patients in thousands of clinical settings in the United States, Canada and online. Her research has been supported by almost $30 million in grants.
She is also a national policy leader, having served on multiple national committees for the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS), The Transplantation Society (TSS), and the American Society of Transplantation (AST). She co-chaired national workgroups for the AST’s Consensus Conference on Best Practices in Live Kidney Donation, which established a set of recommendations for optimal transplant education, and for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) End-Stage Renal Disease Access to Kidney Transplantation to develop quality metrics for transplantation within dialysis centers. She served as a keynote speaker at the White House’s Organ Donation Summit, after which she led the design and development of a national, web-based clearinghouse of educational resources about kidney transplant and living donation which launched online by UNOS. Finally, she continues to serve as an AST Fellow and received the 2019 AST Clinician of Distinction Award for national influence in transplantation by a non-physician.
Advancing Living Donation & Transplantation by Improving Patient Education and Maximizing Resources
Facilitating living donation, especially within minority populations, continues to present challenges not only as it relates to getting patients transplanted but also with respect to identifying donors. Common barriers to effective care can be attributed to inconsistencies identified at the system-level from an operational perspective as well as patient-driven concerns such as financial limitations and the emotional and/or physical burden placed on recipients and their potential donor. During this discussion, we will welcome leaders from the community to share insight into some of the common barriers identified and offer resources to aid transplant centers in providing the patient support needed to overcome some of these barriers.
