About this Special Issue
Facing inequalities in transplantation – a call to improve access to care, outcomes and career developments.
Following the call for action launched at the opening ceremony of the 2021 ESOT congress in Milan, and the mandate of the ESOT Action Day announced at the celebration of ESOT 40th anniversary on April 28, 2022, Transplant International is pleased to announce the launch of a Special issue on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Transplantation”.
Gender disparities, minorities discriminations, barriers related to migration, limited access to healthcare because of low-income and deprived social networks, are still routinely embedded in current culture, systems, policies, and practices, perpetuating a vicious cycle of inequity. Transplant International joins the ESOT call for action to ensure equity in transplantation worldwide today and build a more sustainable future for all tomorrow.
The organ transplantation rate per million population in 2020 demonstrated significant variation across EU countries. Despite legal frameworks existing to prevent discrimination, equal access to transplantation remains a significant challenge for certain populations:
Ethnic minorities: Comorbidities, such as diabetes, obesity and hepatitis B/C, are more prevalent in certain ethnic minority groups. This negatively impacts donation and transplantation rates, resulting in disproportionately high numbers of ethnic minority patients remaining on waiting lists.
Migrants face barriers in access to transplant services, including lower awareness, a lack of full healthcare coverage, linguistic obstacles and cultural differences.
Gender bias: Women donate more organs than they receive, with men making up the majority of organ transplant recipients. While this reflects the increased incidence of conditions that require transplantation amongst men, psychological and socio-economic factors also contribute.
Socioeconomics: Patients with higher income and education have greater access to the transplant waitlist and transplantation compared with patients with lower income and minimal education.
Restricted groups: Both children (due to difficulties finding appropriately sized organs) and highly sensitised individuals (due to a restricted donor pool) face difficulties in receiving a transplant.
Geography: there are significant regional variations in the number of transplants performed within Europe. In many countries, transplant centres are not evenly distributed across their territory, with wealthier areas typically having the most centres. This is even more critical in emerging economies, let alone least developed countries, where access to transplantation is sometimes non-existent.
The aim of this Special Issue is to publish a collection of manuscripts focusing on the evidence examining race, gender-biased, socioeconomic and regional inequity in transplantation. We welcome submissions from the whole field of transplantation science, from basic to clinical and translational studies, aiming to specifically tackle the structural factors resulting in inequity in transplantation. We also encourage contributions as opinion, personal perspective, review, clinical experience, cohort series, as well as clinical studies covering, but not limited to, the following issues:
• Ethnic and racial disparities in transplantation access, management and outcomes;
• Regional inequities, transplant tourism and migrants’ outcomes;
• Sex and gender inequity in transplantation access, management and outcomes;
• Changes of policies/interventions to address inequities in transplantation;
• Building global access to transplantation;
• Diversity and inclusion in clinical trials;
• Diversity and inclusion in academic career progression.
Deadlines
Abstract submission: 31st October 2022 (strongly encouraged)
Extended Manuscript submission: 28th February 2023
Important
As a Gold open access journal, all submissions are subject to publishing fees. Fee solutions are available on a case-by-case basis, including a number of Institutional Agreements. Please contact the editorial office if you have any questions.
Please see the following pages for:
Publishing Fees
Author Guidelines
Keywords: diversity, equity, inclusion, equality, heart transplantation, lung transplantation, liver transplantation, kidney transplantation, pancreas transplantation, living donation, health policy, ethnic minorities, migrants, gender, socioeconomic challenges, DEI
