News

Researcher Dr Pippa Bailey has been bestowed the prestigious Raine award in recognition of her work addressing inequalities within renal medicine.

A clinical lecturer at the University of Bristol and North Bristol NHS Trust, Dr Bailey was recently granted funding to continue her award winning work by Kidney Research UK.

Dr Bailey said: "The value of this sort of research is that it addresses the inequalities in healthcare rather than just noting them. I'm quite a pragmatic person and this research is relevant in that it aims to make sure everyone is able to access new treatments."

And she added: "In the UK, people who are more socioeconomically deprived are less likely to receive a living-donor kidney transplant, despite being more likely to develop kidney failure than less deprived individuals. My National Institute for Health Research doctoral fellowship aimed to understand the reasons for this observed socioeconomic inequity. Our prospective multicentre cohort study suggested that once an individual had started assessment for living donation there was no association between socioeconomic deprivation and likelihood of donation. Rather, we found that more deprived people face difficulties earlier on in the process of getting a living donor kidney transplant. In-depth qualitative interviews with people with kidney failure suggested that more deprived people are less involved in and less confident having discussions about their treatment, and doctors might be less good at engaging them in these discussions. More deprived people perceived a lack of social support, and appeared to struggle to think of people who might be suitable donors.

"Currently I am opening a large multicentre questionnaire-based case-control study, funded by Kidney Research UK, which will investigate quantitatively the emergent variables from earlier qualitative-research. There has been a clear trajectory to my main programme of research: I have aimed to identify targets for intervention, and I am therefore now in the process of designing and applying for funding for a socioeconomically-tailored multicomponent complex intervention to support people with kidney disease to access a LDKT, and to redress the observed socioeconomic inequity in living-donor kidney transplantation.

"I am extremely grateful for and honoured to receive the Raine award this year. I am indebted to those from whose encouragement and expert supervision I have benefited, in particular Professor Yoav Ben-Shlomo, Dr Charlie Tomson, Dr Fergus Caskey, Dr Amanda Owen-Smith and Dr Simon Satchell. I will be using the award to attend a training course on co-design run by the Point of Care Foundation, developed from the King’s Fund programme, to aid with the development and refinement of the intervention we aim to trial.”

The Raine award is made to a relatively junior investigator who has not reached consultant grade or senior lecturer for non-clinical scientists and who has made a significant contribution to renal research.

The awardee usually makes a presentation of the work which has led up to the award at a Renal Association Conference and will also receive a full article-processing charge waiver to publish one article in BMC Nephrology, where they are listed as an author, and their authorship fulfils ICMJE authorship criteria. The prize is valid for one year, and publication of the manuscript is subject to editorial assessment and peer review.