Congratulations to Making Waves recipient, Dr. Amanda Vinson

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The Nova Scotia Health community includes staff, clinicians and other frontline healthcare workers, researchers and volunteers across the province who work tirelessly each day to ensure that Nova Scotians are receiving the highest quality care and services.  

The Nova Scotia Health Making Waves awards program honors these individuals and groups who have significantly contributed to the health and well-being of Nova Scotians.  

While the Research, Innovation and Discovery team at Nova Scotia Health celebrates all of this year’s Making Waves award recipients, we would like to specifically recognize those within our research and innovation community.  

Dr. Amanda Vinson, a kidney transplant clinician-researcher, received the Early Career/ Emerging Researcher Award.  

Tell us a bit about yourself; what you do, where you are located and your favourite part about what you do.

My name is Dr. Amanda Vinson and I am a kidney transplant clinician-researcher with Nova Scotia Health. I received my medical degree from the University of British Columbia and completed internal medicine, nephrology and a kidney transplant fellowship at Dalhousie University, beginning my career as a staff physician in late 2017. I went on to complete a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Mass., with a thesis that explored kidney donor-recipient pairing and associated post-transplant outcomes.

My research interests include studying predictors of kidney graft and patient survival following transplant, with a focus on strategic matching of kidney donors and recipients to maximize outcomes. I have a special interest in disparities in access to care and the effects of sex and gender in kidney transplantation. I hold regional and national funding to examine barriers to accessing transplant in Nova Scotia and across Canada. I am the national co-chair of the Kidney Working Group through the Canadian Society of Transplantation and the global chair for Women in Transplantation Pillar 3, advocating for gender equity in access to transplant worldwide.

I feel very fortunate to have the job that I do. It is a privilege to be involved in clinical care, particularly at such an emotionally charged and hopeful moment as when a patient is called in for a kidney transplant. I also love research and am especially motivated by work that has the potential to improve care for my patients—particularly improving equitable access to kidney transplant and post-transplant care for all Nova Scotians, optimizing the allocation of deceased donor kidney organs in Atlantic Canada and improving outcomes for patients after transplant.  

My favourite part of what I do is the collaboration and teamwork that comes with a growing research team, which is also fundamental to delivering exceptional patient care.

How do you feel your work contributes to the health and wellbeing of Nova Scotians? Why is it important?

My proudest accomplishments relate to a growing body of research that I am leading examining reduced access to kidney transplantation for women versus men in Nova Scotia and Canada. We know that kidney transplant is the best treatment option for patients living with kidney failure in terms of improving their survival and quality of life. Yet, my research has shown that in Nova Scotia, women without a contraindication to transplant are 43 per cent less likely to be referred for transplant than men, 42 per cent less likely to be activated on the waitlist once referred and 26 per cent less likely to be transplanted even once activated on the waitlist. Access to transplant is further restricted for older Nova Scotian women with kidney failure, who have a 75 per cent lower hazard for transplant than age-matched men.  

These staggering disparities require our attention. In response to these findings, I have secured $350,000 in provincial and national grant funding, including a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Planning grant, to help better understand why women in Nova Scotia face such immense barriers when accessing transplant. This will include revitalization of our current transplant education material to be provided in a ubiquitous and gender-sensitive manner for all patients with kidney failure who do not have an absolute contraindication to transplant. We have also conducted focus groups across Canada to identify the perceptions of patients with kidney failure towards transplant and to identify if there are differences in how women and men feel about pursuing kidney transplant as an option for managing their kidney disease.  

The hope is that this will help identify and improve access to transplant for all Nova Scotians, specifically helping women overcome barriers faced to ensure access to this life saving therapy is more equitable.  

Related research I am leading is examining whether rural Nova Scotians also face additional challenges accessing transplant compared to their urban counterparts and whether transplant outcomes differ by distance from the central transplant clinic and by geography across the province. 

Finally, I have an interest in deceased donor organ allocation and strategies to best allocate organs in an equitable manner that improves overall transplant outcomes. My earlier research (related to my Harvard thesis) has demonstrated the importance of non-immunologic donor and recipient matching (for example weight matching) and this has influenced current organ allocation practices for Atlantic Canada; as a result weight matching is now included in allocation protocols for deceased donor kidneys in Atlantic Canada. Based on this and other related research I have led, I currently have secured funding to optimize our existing deceased donor allocation practices for Atlantic Canada and am leading a working group to institute these changes.

What does it mean to you to receive this award?

I am absolutely humbled and honoured to receive this award. I am passionate about research and providing the best care I can for my patients (clinically and through research that improves their care). To be nominated and then receive the Making Waves Research and Innovation Early Career/Emerging Researcher Award is a privilege. It is a wonderful acknowledgement of all the hard work I have poured into my research and I am immensely grateful.  

As this year’s recipient of this award, how do you hope to inspire others who are working to make a difference in the lives of Nova Scotians each day?

I think the most important thing is to recognize that as a researcher your work can actually have real and significant impacts for patients and communities in Nova Scotia. Especially as an early career researcher, it can take a lot of work and dedication to find your stride and at times it can feel like your efforts are going unnoticed or that your research will have no appreciable bearings or impact.  

However, this is not the case. While the appropriate implementation strategies need to be followed, the work being done by researchers in Nova Scotia can directly benefit Nova Scotians.  

Without research, important issues may go unnoticed (for example, the immense disparities faced by Nova Scotian women regarding access to kidney transplant, a lifesaving therapy). Without asking the question, this disparity would continue to go unrecognized.  

Once you ask the question, you can then identify future research opportunities to address these issues and ultimately, to overcome them!