Clinical trials exist to help prevent, screen for, diagnose, or treat diseases and other health problems. Without them, we would not have new treatments or other advances in health and medicine. But how are the clinical trial endpoints, or the preferred outcomes of these trials determined? Today, Anthony Gucciardo NKF’s Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Dr. Joseph Vassalotti, NKF’s Chief Medical Officer, and Kent Bressler, a Patient advocate and FSGS patient, discuss this and more.
In this episode we heard from:
Dr. Joseph Vassalotti MD
Dr. Vassalotti is the Chief Medical Officer of the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) and Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology, at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. At NKF, his major focus is implementation of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines in chronic kidney disease (CKD). He led collaborations to develop the Kidney Health Evaluation for Adults with Diabetes quality measure to improve evidenced based estimated glomerular filtration rate and albuminuria testing to guide detection, risk stratification and interventions proportional to risk in the U.S. He also served as PI for an AARP-funded Kidney Health Evaluation for Adults with Diabetes to analyze quality measure satisfaction with detection, evidenced-based
therapies and health equity. Currently, he serves as Principal Investigator for the Kidney Score Platform, an NKF educational project funded by the Veterans Administration Center for Innovation to improve awareness and education among Veterans with and at risk for CKD in the primary care setting. He is also a co-investigator for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s CKD Surveillance Project. Dr. Vassalotti typically sees approximately 40 patients per week and has over 100 publications in peerreviewed journals.
Anthony Gucciardo
Anthony is responsible for forging and maintaining relations with key external stakeholders across a wide range of industries, to advance NKF’s mission and objectives, along with those of its partner organizations. Anthony oversees two national Corporate Development Teams, focused on securing revenue necessary to ensure NKF programmatic excellence and impact. He has been with the Foundation since 2002. Prior to NKF, Anthony was a Hematopoietic Stem Cell Technologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where he was responsible for processing autogeneic/allogeneic bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cells for transplantation. He holds a master’s degree in Biochemistry from Columbia University.
Kent Bressler
Kent is a retired RN who was diagnosed with FSGS in 1984, and received a living donor transplant from his brother Kip in 1987. Kent is an active advocate for preemptive kidney transplant and has on the recommendation of NKF worked closely with the DoD and PCORI as a consumer peer reviewer. He is an NKF peer mentor and advocate who has collaborated on an editorial “Change in Albuminuria and GFR as End Points for Clinical Trials in Early Stages of Chronic Kidney Disease,” published in AJKD in 2019. He will also be participating in the development of the new NKF Patient Network serving on the Data Input and Integration Committee. He has been an active hill advocate for the NKF for six years and was the proud recipient of the 2017 Richard K. Salick Advocacy Award. Kent is also an Army Veteran and retired from the Veterans administration as an RN. He is the co-founder of Kidney Solutions a not for profit program in Texas that assists patients and families in the transplant process and in finding a donor. He is currently an assistant team leader for Region 7. Kent and Cathy Bressler have been married for 50 years and their family consists of Gretchen and Todd Rossington and their son Colt and Celeste and Alex Brown and their children John Banks, Catherine and Alexis Brown.
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