*Purpose: Our purpose was to increase access to living donor kidney transplantation for patients referred at our center. With our interventions, our patients and their support system learned to share their stories, identify potential living donors in their lives and educate themselves on living donation enough to answer questions.

*Methods: We established a living donor champion program in 2016 and expanded it in 2017. We also started to mandate living donor coordinators encounters with all referred patients at that time. During the encounter, the coordinators run through a living donor map with the patients; identifying everyone in their lives who needs be told their story. They were provided with an educational binder about living donation and the benefits of living donor transplant also. Finally, they were given personalized “business cards” identifying themselves as in need of a kidney transplant with the numbers to reach our living donor coordinators for inquiries. The efficacy of these 5 interventions (encounter, donor map, information binder, champion program, business cards) was retrospectively reviewed for 2017 and 2018.

*Results: From April 1st 2017 until December 31st 2018, 484 patients were referred for kidney transplant at our center AND had an encounter with one of our living donor coordinator. Of those, 129 (26%) expressed having identified a potential living donor (PLD) prior to meeting with us. After the encounter, 401 (82%) were now able to identify a PLD. During this time we held 5 living donor champion sessions with a total of 20 kidney transplant candidates attending; each coming with their support system (sometimes as large as 8 individuals). Of these, 3 were denied as transplant candidate and 17 had at least one PLD screened (11 of those were actually transplanted). Therefore, 100% of participants who were not denied as candidates had a PLD screened and 64% were transplanted within 1 year of participating in the program. In comparison, of those who did not participate in program, 113 (24%) were denied, 42 (9%) were transplanted (deceased or living donor). 69 (14%) had a PLD screened (24 were transplanted with a living donors).

*Conclusions: Of all interventions used to increase access to living donor kidney transplantation, the living donor champion program is the most empowering and yields to the best results. Increasing patients ability to attend the program (offering numerous dates, times and language options) will further benefit the population.

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