Charlotte Economist Glenn Dutcher Researches Kidney Transplant Shortages
Research that is the first of its kind holds enormous potential to address the nationwide shortage of kidneys for transplant. UNC Charlotte microeconomist Glenn Dutcher and his colleagues have found significant differences in the transplant acceptance rates not only among clinicians within the same transplant centers but also among such centers in general.
“Our study is the first to look at individual clinician-level heterogeneity in the actual decisions they are making,” Dutcher said. “Ultimately, we want to understand if there are distinct decision processes at the human level. Are there differences in how clinicians think about their patients and how they think about accepting deceased donor kidneys on behalf of their patients? But we first had to discover if there was uniformity in decision-making among clinicians at the same clinics or not.”
The researchers’ broad area of transplantation investigation is supported by a nearly $1.5 million R01 grant and a $450,000 R21 grant from the National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
In addition to Dutcher, authors of the research paper published in the “American Journal of Transplantation” are lead author and principal investigator Ellen Green, College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University; Jesse D. Schold, Departments of Surgery and Epidemiology, University of Colorado–Anschutz; and Darren Stewart, Department of Surgery, NYU Langone Health. This is a leading journal in its field.
Read the story at https://belkcollege.charlotte.edu/2025/04/08/research-kidney-transplantation/.