Return to Country : A national platform study to return Indigenous renal patients home

End-stage kidney disease (ESKD), when dialysis or a kidney transplant is required to maintain life, has a devastating impact on Indigenous patients and their families.

In remote communities, rates of ESKD are 15 or more times higher than amongst non-Indigenous Australians of the same age and sex, and people need to relocate to distant urban centres to take up dialysis.
Community-based dialysis or a kidney transplant allows a patient to return to live in their community.

Indigenous Australians have very low rates of such community-based treatment: a third the non-Indigenous chance of home-based dialysis treatment, and a quarter (overall) the non-Indigenous chance of a kidney transplant.

This multicentre mixed methods registry-based prospective interventional study is led by a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers who bring renal specialist, community-controlled health service and patient perspectives to inform research design, conduct and translation. It is characterising the socioeconomic, environmental, health service and biomedical factors driving the health outcomes and patterns of health service utilisation experienced by Indigenous Australians with ESKD in 13 tertiary renal services around the country, and will test if health service changes to address these identified barriers can get more people home for treatment.

This national collaboration, addressing a key priority in health service delivery - How to help Indigenous Australians get treatment at home - is essential to improve access to best-practice care.

Chief Investigator
Project Manager
Project Timeline
  • 2019 - 2023
Research Opportunities
  • There are opportunities for higher degree students (Masters, PhD) with this project. For further information, contact Project Manager Yomei Jones
  1. Truong, M., Bourke, C., Jones, Y., Cook, O., & Lawton, P. (2020). Equity in clinical practice requires organisational and system-level change - The role of nurse leaders. Collegian. In Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colegn.2020.09.004
  1. Confronting racism to improve healthcare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients with kidney disease

    Confronting racism to improve healthcare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients with kidney disease

    Date

    Action is urgently needed to confront the immense health disparities in kidney disease outcomes suffered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’