The aim of the Symposium on Obesity and Kidney Transplantation is to actively engage a diverse group of stakeholders – patients, health care professionals in kidney transplantation and obesity (nephrologists, nurses, surgeons), allied health professionals (social workers, dieticians), and transplant and obesity researchers – to review and discuss current state of knowledge around weight management and eligibility for kidney transplantation for persons with moderate to extreme obesity.  

The long-term aims of this meeting are to provide a framework for future interdisciplinary research teams and to improve access to kidney transplants for patients with obesity. Research is difficult and expensive and often time consuming, and there are limited funds available. A competitive research question must address an important issue and it must be feasible to design a study to get a clear answer.

There are 4 steps to creating good research questions:

  1. Identify a focus area – obesity and kidney transplantation
  2. Identify a topic – diet & nutrition, weight management, adipose assessment, patient eligibility, surgical options, post-surgical care
  3. Ask questions about the topic:
    1. Who, what, where, when, why
    1. Population, outcomes, treatment, timeframe, setting
    1. Making questions more specific with when, where, and who
  4. Creating the research question(s)

During the breaks, you will be prompted to submit potential research questions via an online Qualtrics survey. These might be questions raised by individual speakers, questions generated in considering the content of the talks, or questions the field has neither attempted to address or answer. At the end of the meeting, we will review, refine, and prioritize research questions generated throughout the day.

For example, after hearing the first keynote talk and listening to the first set of panelists, you are concerned about the use of body mass index (BMI) in assessing the ratio of adipose (fat) tissue to muscle tissue in patients. Some possible research questions generated from the talks might be:

  • What other methods of assessing adipose tissue composition are appropriate for patients awaiting kidney transplantation?
  • How does BMI compare to other methods of assessing adipose composition in patients awaiting kidney transplantation?
  • What metric of adipose assessment is associated with the best transplant outcomes (access, patient and graft failure, mortality) for patients with moderate and severe obesity?

The link and QR code to access the Qualtrics survey are below:

https://chpswtemple.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e8uTEzNjPeIhnJI

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