Press Releases

The following statement can be attributed to Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (WA-01).

“As Co-Chair of the Congressional Kidney Caucus, I welcome the announcement UW Medicine is leading the medical community in addressing racial bias in our health care system by no longer using race as a correction factor when determining kidney function. The race-based correction factor, which has no justified scientific purpose, is a perfect example of an artifact of decades-old racial bias at best that still impacts people of color today. I commend the University of Washington medical students who refused to accept this as fact and helped move UW Medicine in the right direction.”

Recently, UW Medicine announced its labs would no longer use the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) to calculate kidney function and will instead use the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) equation. The new protocol excludes race as a variable. 

According to the National Institutes of Health, 17% of African Americans have Chronic Kidney Disease compared to about 14% of Caucasians and African Americans are 3.5 times more likely to advance to kidney failure.