As a member of the American Heart Association’s Kidney Council in Cardiovascular Disease Leadership Group, I was invited (along with Drs. Adam Whaley Connell and Nuria Pastor-Soler) to participate as a member of the Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) Surveillance System Advisory Group on a project entitled “Establishing a Surveillance System for Chronic Kidney Disease in the U.S.” This is a CDC-led collaborative group with representations from the various federal agencies, academia, national organizations, and other partners.

From Narva et al.

This Steering Committee is Co-Chaired by Drs. Rajiv Saran (University of Michigan, Kidney Epidemiology and Cost Center) and Neil Powe (University of California San Francisco). The objective of this collaborative group is to develop a national CKD surveillance system, the purpose of which, is to establish the distribution of CKD and its risk factors in the U.S. population and subpopulations, and also to track the progress of efforts to prevent and manage CKD and its complications. This is actually the second appointment of a CDC CKD Surveillance System Advisory Group. The initial Advisory Group was convened during website development and tasked to contribute to the initial selection of topics, data sources, and data presentation on the website at http://nccd.cdc.gov/ckd/. This website includes information about the natural history and prevalence of CKD, screening for CKD, awareness of CKD, CKD complications and risk factors, cost-effectiveness of CKD interventions, as well as morbidity and mortality weekly reports (MMWRs). As a clinical nephrologist practicing in the community, I can envision using the information provided in the website whenever I prepare lectures (as part of community outreach) about CKD whether my audience are in the medical field or lay.

The group also distributed a National CKD Fact Sheet which I think is going to be quite useful not only for primary care providers dealing with patients with CKD and its attendant risk factors and complications, but for patient advocates as well.

During the meeting, there was a lot of discussion regarding how to optimize utilization of the website and the factsheet, how to improve the website and also how to disseminate the information at hand. I am encouraged to see that this resource is a manifestation of our recognition of the impact of that the CKD epidemic has in our communities. With appropriate coordination among the various groups and stakeholders, the effectiveness and coherence of each agency’s efforts could be enhanced and implementation of system changes needed to improve CKD outcomes could hopefully, be promoted and achieved.

Post by Dr. Edgar Lerma, eAJKD Advisory Board member. 

Check out all of eAJKD’s coverage of Kidney Week 2014!