*Purpose: Disparities in pursuit of living donor kidney transplantation (LDKT) among African Americans remain challenging to overcome. Animation-based education is a promising approach to increasing accessibility and dissemination of information. A more nuanced understanding of AA barriers to pursuit of LDKT and the practical utility of educational health animations to deliver educational benefits is needed.

*Methods: We held 8 focus groups and 31 one-on-one interviews with 44 AA adult kidney transplant candidates, recipients, and their caregivers (when available) to examine barriers to pursuing LDKT and to identify important content and design features of health animations to improve capacity related to those barriers. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and qualitatively analyzed by two independent coders using an inductive constant comparative approach.

*Results: The mean age of participants was 53.6 years (SD=12.3), 25% were transplant candidates, 70% were recipients, and 5% were caregivers. Four barriers to pursuit of LDKT emerged: (1) interest in LDKT, (2) knowledge about LDKT, (3) communication about kidney donation, and (4) concerns about donor outcome. Using the Three I’s Framework and it’s components of image, interactivity and integration, health animations can be specifically designed to address each of the stated barriers above to provide educational benefits. The motivational moving image, the ability to choose a specific topic of interest to learn and stop and start the video at a specified point, and the sharing capability among family/friends and other learning techniques are especially useful characteristics of the health animations.

*Conclusions: Our research identifies salient barriers to AA pursuit of LDKT and, through the lens of the Three I’s Framework, describes the practical utility of animation-based learning to deliver didactic benefits to the user.

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