Milken Institute's Sarah Wells Kocsis Outlines How to Improve Earlier Detection of CKD

Sarah Wells Kocsis, MBA, director of the Center for Public Health at the Milken Institute, talks about improving detection and management in chronic kidney disease (CKD) care in her recently authored report, “Chronic Kidney Disease: Finding a Path to Prevention, Earlier Detection, and Management.”

Transcript

What are the most important ways that earlier detection and management can be improved for CKD?

Well, if we were to step back and really approach this and ask, "What would this look like in an ideal world," we would really want to have a robust infrastructure that's conducive to upstream and prevention approaches—and we don't have that right now. So we're going to have to tackle this with a multi-faceted approach.

The first thing we need to do is build and have a strong foundation. The report calls out 4 large-scale areas, and they're around driving system-level change. What do I mean by that? Talking about building and sustaining a diverse workforce in community health. I'm talking about funding gaps that need to be addressed in order to support a robust infrastructure. Talking about public health data collection and surveillance and just the broader public health infrastructure.

Second, we need to capitalize on opportunities and areas with the greatest potential for impact and change. The report then kind of moves into, "What are those opportunities?" We prioritized 8 of them, and we were able to develop 40 actionable recommendations and steps for catalyzing change around those 8 opportunities.

Then lastly, big problems call for creative approaches, and we need everyone engaged. And so that's why the report also identifies and calls on 6 different stakeholder groups that we need to stand up to galvanize the movement that's needed.