Increasing Live Donor Kidney Transplantation Through Video-based Education and Mobile Communication

Over a 2.5 year period we will conduct a 2-arm parallel randomized trial among patients presenting for kidney transplant evaluation at a single transplant center to compare the effects of KidneyTIME versus usual care for KTX access over 12 months of intervention use and follow-up.

Participants will be recruited from the Transplant program at Erie County Medical Center, a safety-net hospital in Buffalo, New York. Each week, electronic records will be accessed to identify potential participants who had been referred to the transplant center for a kidney transplant, are aged 18 years and older, speak English, have internet access, and signed electronic consent as well as provided a text or email address. We will excude patients previously exposed to any component of the intervention.

Each potential participant will be sent an electronic invitation from the principal investigator (a transplant surgeon). This message will briefly described the study and include a personal link to an online consent form describing study procedures and potential risks. A stakeholder Advisory Council, whose members include patients and care partners, will review and provide ongoing feedback on the recruitment and retention plan.

The entire study and the progress tracker will be hosted on Alchemer. Those who sign electronic consent to participate will be automatically guided to a baseline sociodemographic survey (T0). Upon completion, computer-generated randomization will stratify participants by self-reported race (Black versus Other), with equal allocation to 2 treatment arms: the KidneyTIME intervention and usual care. Condition assignment of each participant will be concealed from transplant providers, but participants will become aware of their treatment assignment one they access the study educational content.

KidneyTIME is a self-directed digital intervention. It contains 25 animated videos, each 1-3 minutes in length, designed to address knowledge gaps and concerns about kidney transplantation and living donation that were identified in literature reviews, formative research, and video development studies as critical for optimal prospective kidney recipient and donor participation in LDKT. All components of the intervention were developed through a user-centered design approach by involving kidney failure patients and social network members, to improve usability and increase the likelihood of adoption.