TY - JOUR
T1 - Of kin and kidneys
T2 - Do kinship networks contribute to racial disparities in living donor kidney transplantation?
AU - Daw, Jonathan
N1 - Funding Information:
The author wishes to thank Ted Mouw, Guang Guo, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Kieran Healy, Michael Emch, Jason Boardman, Ashton Verdery, the SSM editors and reviewers, and many others for their comments and suggestions on previous versions of this manuscript. Any errors are the author's alone. This research was supported by NIH grants T32 HD07168 , R01 HD061622 , R01 HD060726 , R24 HD066613 , and T32 HD007289 . This work was supported in part by Health Resources and Services Administration contract 234-2005-370011C. The content is the responsibility of the authors alone and does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. The collection of data used in this study was partly supported by the National Institutes of Health under grant number R01 HD069609 and the National Science Foundation under award number 1157698.
PY - 2014/3
Y1 - 2014/3
N2 - In the United States, racial disparities in kidney transplantation are large and especially stark for living donor transplants. Medical researchers frequently attribute this to the availability of medically compatible living kidney donors, who are usually kin. This paper evaluates this hypothesis by testing whether African American transplant candidates likely have lesser access to suitable living donors in their kinship networks than white candidates. This paper evaluates this hypothesis using a simulation design. Contrary to prior research on this topic, this simulation analysis concludes that black-white disparities in living donor kidney transplantation are unlikely to be the result of group differences in the availability of suitable donors. Although individual white kin are individually more likely to be suitable donors, African Americans' larger average kinship networks compensate for this difference.
AB - In the United States, racial disparities in kidney transplantation are large and especially stark for living donor transplants. Medical researchers frequently attribute this to the availability of medically compatible living kidney donors, who are usually kin. This paper evaluates this hypothesis by testing whether African American transplant candidates likely have lesser access to suitable living donors in their kinship networks than white candidates. This paper evaluates this hypothesis using a simulation design. Contrary to prior research on this topic, this simulation analysis concludes that black-white disparities in living donor kidney transplantation are unlikely to be the result of group differences in the availability of suitable donors. Although individual white kin are individually more likely to be suitable donors, African Americans' larger average kinship networks compensate for this difference.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.11.043
DO - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.11.043
M3 - Article
C2 - 24581060
AN - SCOPUS:84894413732
SN - 0277-9536
VL - 104
SP - 42
EP - 47
JO - Social Science and Medicine
JF - Social Science and Medicine
ER -