Highlights from UK Kidney Week 2023
A team of 15 from Kidney Research UK travelled to the International Convention Centre in Newport, Wales, for UK Kidney Week (UKKW) on 5-7 June 2023. A key conference for everyone involved in kidney disease care and research, patients and other interested groups, we are pleased to report very high levels of interest in our work and some exciting new study results.
UKKW is an important date on the Kidney Research UK calendar, offering a great opportunity to meet up with our funded researchers and share our plans to meet the challenge of kidney disease. Alongside attending the varied congress programme, our team ran a series of ‘surgeries’ offering attendees the chance to come to our stand and ask any question about our work. There was also the opportunity to meet some of the team involved in our recent health economics report – Kidney disease – a UK public health emergency.
Tracey Murray, director of programmes at Kidney Research UK commented “Alongside our successful research grants programme, we also support researchers in bringing their innovations to patients, engage with government bodies to ensure that kidney patients are properly represented in decision making and commission reports into kidney-related issues of national importance. Through events such as UKKW we can reach many more researchers and patients, allowing us to do more, faster.”
What is a medical conference?
Medical conferences are large meetings, often focusing on a single topic such as kidneys, that allow researchers and healthcare providers the chance to share their study findings and meet others working in similar areas, promoting collaboration and development of new ideas.
For Kidney Research UK, conferences offer an important opportunity to showcase our work, and that of our supported researchers, encouraging applications to our grants programme and driving greater participation in our work supporting kidney patients in government decision making and bringing innovations to patients.
With three days of presentations and poster sessions, we were delighted to see so much Kidney Research UK funded work presented. Tracey added “Some truly fantastic work was shared at UKKW, and some important future collaborations were discussed. UKKW offers a unique opportunity to connect with the kidney community, allowing us to collaborate with a wide range of groups and individuals and I’d like to thank everyone involved for their hard work."
Our highlights from UKKW 2023
- The excitement and interest around our new health economics and mental health reports, with more than 200 copies distributed from our stand and an interview with ITV news
- Dr Melanie Chan winning the prestigious Raine Award for her contribution to our understanding of kidney disease. You can read more about Melanie’s work with us
- New results from Kidney BEAM presented by Dr Sharlene Greenwood, find out more about Kidney BEAM
- Huge interest around research using healthcare data, including presentations from NURTuRE and new collaborators for the Kidney Research Data Portal
- Winning best poster for ‘Raising health inequalities up the political agenda’
- The chance to meet up in person with so many of our patient advisors and lay advisory group members
- The 2023 Kidney Research UK Fun Run
- Participation in two two health inequalities sessions highlighting out work on under representation in kidney research, our health inequalities report and the HIDDEN and ANTENNAE studies.
