How We Advocate

The ISN produces key evidence and analysis to support its advocacy positions and calls to action, providing concrete policy proposals, solutions, and examples of best practices to contribute effectively to relevant policies and debates.

The ISN Global Kidney Policy Forum is a yearly high-level meeting organized by the ISN at each World Congress of Nephrology (WCN). It brings together key decision-makers and stakeholders to address the burden of kidney diseases in a specific country or region and to share strategies for prevention and improved management of the disease at both the regional and global levels.

The first Global Kidney Policy Forum took place in April 2017, followed by the second one held in Melbourne in 2019. Stakeholders invested in addressing the growing burden of kidney diseases gathered to describe, discuss, and develop a set of 12 Recommendations to Global Kidney Health to guide future efforts to reduce the burden of kidney diseases worldwide.

Successive Global Kidney Policy Forums are committed to the continued adherence to and advancement of the 12 Recommendations.

The next Global Kidney Policy Forum will take place at WCN 2021 in Montreal and will focus on challenges and opportunities affecting kidney care in the North American and Caribbean region.

To define the state of kidney care worldwide, and provide policy recommendations for improvement, the ISN launched a global survey project, the ISN Global Kidney Health Atlas (GKHA) in 2016, to collect information on the current capacity for kidney health care delivery around the world.

Read more about this project here.

The SharE-RR initiative develops resources to help establish or develop renal registries in emerging countries; among the tools available is an open-access global inventory of renal registries and how they operate, a list of experts to provide advice, and workshops covering a range of topics.

The availability of these resources is important, as many countries currently lack or possess incomplete renal registry data. Such data provides critical information to support the planning, delivery, and evaluation of renal services and highlights discrepancies in available kidney care to allocate resources where the need is greatest. Registry data identifies the highest causes of kidney disease in a region to inform the prevention, detection, and early treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD), which in parallel can be used as fundamental instruments to carry out evidence-based advocacy activities.

Learn more about the SharE-RR initiative here.