Dialysis Patient Advocate Has Been Living with Kidney Disease
for 19 Years

Elizabeth Jones first learned that she had kidney disease in 1991 when a routine pre-employment blood test showed that she had protein in her urine. Elizabeth was 25 years old at the time and was about to go to work at Methodist Hospital in Houston as a social worker after earning her Masters in Social Work from Virginia Commonwealth University.

The doctor who told her about her test results was not very knowledgeable or reassuring about kidney disease. Elizabeth remembers him saying, “Eat whatever you want. Don’t worry about putting that dialysis machine in the garage just yet.” She was deeply troubled and not reassured. What did this diagnosis mean for her future? She didn’t have to wait long to find out.
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The Kidney TRUST is observing National Kidney Month and World Kidney Day by conducting a series of free rapid-screening programs in Colorado, California, Texas, and Washington, D.C. throughout the month of March. Since the TRUST launched its CKD rapid-screening program in October of 2007, nearly 7,000 people have been screened for the disease.

“26 million adult Americans suffer from kidney disease,” said TRUST President Barbara Lawson, “but CKD is a silent epidemic and often has no symptoms until the kidneys begin to fail. Thousands of people crash into dialysis in the United States every year because they haven’t known that their kidneys were at risk. The good news is that CKD is usually treatable if detected early.”
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The Kidney TRUST is piloting a new Financial Assistance Program (FAP) for people on dialysis who are having trouble managing co-pays, co-insurance and deductibles for medical treatment, services, and prescription drugs that are covered under their private health insurance plan.

To date 176 grants have been awarded. As one grant recipient has recounted, “The grant was simply a godsend for me and the entire family. We were really struggling. I was starting to think about skipping some of the drugs I was supposed to be taking and splitting pills to make them last. With the grant, all the worry went away. It was really the missing piece of the puzzle for me.”

The 2009 FAP pilot is being conducted in selected counties in California (Los Angeles and Orange Counties), Colorado (Arapahoe and Denver Counties), and Texas (Bexar & Harris Counties). More information about the program is available on our website at www.KidneyTRUST.org.
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