Noah McCrory
MINNEAPOLIS — A major change in the world of medicine is helping to make kidney transplants more racially equitable.
Race is no longer considered an important test for estimating kidney function.
Bernadeia Johnson, a black woman from Minneapolis, had kidney transplant surgery last month.
“I’m doing really well,” she said.
Living with stage five chronic kidney disease, Johnson had five failed donors until the sixth turned out to be the charm.
“I had to show some level of strength, but I have to say no one should show that much strength,” she said. “It was very difficult.”
There are several factors that influence whether someone is placed on the transplant waiting list, including, of course, whether there is a match, but one of the factors is how long the wait was.
Johnson had a big boost there.
Bernadeia Johnson
“I was on the list for two years, but after they did the recalculation, I was on the list for five years and eight months,” she said.
This adjustment was the result of removing race as a component of a test that estimates kidney function.
“I might still be waiting,” Johnson said.
Kirsten Johansen, chief of nephrology at Hennepin Healthcare, says the test has consistently caused black people’s results to rise again, which in some cases may have affected their eligibility for a transplant.
“They required all transplant centers to go back and reevaluate… and then review the charts of all black patients to see if they could document that, under the newer equation, they would have a lower estimated kidney function sooner, and then to adjust the timing,” Johansen said.
Johansen says there is still much work to do to address racial disparities in health outcomes.
“Among people with kidney failure, who require dialysis or a transplant, it is almost four times higher for black people than for white people,” she said. “It’s also higher among Hispanics.”
In Johnson’s case, the culprits were diabetes and high blood pressure — two risk factors that occur at higher rates in black people.
“There’s no magic solution to any of this,” she said. “Just trying to take control of my own health and become my own best advocate.”
Johnson received his transplant at M Health Fairview.
Fairview stopped using breed as an automatic adjustment to determine kidney health in 2021.
David Schumann
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