Americans with Kidney, Cardiac, and Metabolic Disorders Target Barriers to Care Choice

Newly Registered Voters Motivated by Medical Innovation and Living Organ Donor Protections

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP), the nation’s oldest and largest independent kidney patient advocacy organization, today marked the midpoint of its 2026 national, nonpartisan KidneyVoter™ campaign, “50 States in 50 Days.” Launched on September 14, 2026, the campaign has successfully engaged and mobilized key constituencies across 25 states. The campaign engages kidney patients, living organ donors, families, care partners, advocates, researchers, healthcare professionals, and employees of small and large companies involved in kidney, heart, and diabetes care innovation. The 2026 effort has also reached patient and professional communities impacted by Cardio-Kidney-Metabolic (CKM) Syndrome and includes heart disease advocates, the diabetes community, and patients suffering from bone and mineral disorders

Kidney disease impacts more than 37 million Americans and their families. Further, interrelated cardiovascular, kidney, and metabolic diseases have impacted more than 25% of the adult population and are a leading cause of death. More broadly, an estimated 90% of U.S. adults, or approximately 240 million people, have some degree of interconnected cardiovascular, kidney, or metabolic health conditions according to the American Heart Association.

For the remainder of October, the KidneyVoter™ campaign will focus on states with populations highly impacted by the burdens of multiple chronic diseases, including Maine, Texas, New Hampshire, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Montana, Florida, Washington, Iowa, and others. AAKP’s 2026 strategy incorporates tactics refined during its successful 2024 KidneyVoter™ program that engaged over 500,000 KidneyVoters™. According to election data science and targeting experts, the 2024 campaign created a new “micro-constituency” within the American electorate. By the 2028 election cycle, AAKP estimates the KidneyVoter™ program will engage over one million Americans impacted by kidney and other chronic diseases and organ failure.

AAKP President Edward V. Hickey, III, a chronic kidney disease patient, stated, “At the midpoint of our 2026 nonpartisan voter registration campaign, it is clear that the people AAKP has engaged are highly motivated voters. They are determined to send a message to every candidate that issues affecting their health, and the health of their loved ones, are too often overlooked. Those issues include permanently protecting the jobs of living organ donors under the FMLA, speeding FDA approval of a new generation of safer transplant medicines, and adopting common-sense Medicare payment reforms so patients can get life-saving innovations while they still have time to benefit.” Hickey is a U.S. Marine Corps Veteran, a former senior Congressional aide, and has served in appointed roles in two presidential administrations. He currently serves on the American Board of Internal Medicine’s (ABIM) Nephrology Specialty Board and as the Chair of the AAKP Veterans Health Initiative, the largest kidney health outreach program outside of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

KidneyVoters™ use their social media networks, voices, and votes to bring Congressional and White House attention to issues that undermine America’s efforts to save more innocent lives from chronic diseases and to reduce health spending. Top issues include the lack of kidney and chronic disease awareness and prevention, long-overdue early disease screening, anti-competitive practices of America’s large corporate dialysis providers, utilization of discriminatory Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY) measures, and negative Government Determinants of Health (GDOH) including obsolete federal regulations and Medicare reimbursement policies that stymie innovation and patient choice of new treatments. In 2024, AAKP patient advocates led the kidney community by calling for the immediate dismissal of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) leadership, citing USPSTF’s 20-year record of incompetence and failure to issue a screening recommendation for kidney disease for the most vulnerable Americans. The USPSTF failure occurred despite USPSTF’s access to overwhelming peer-reviewed evidence of the dangers of disease progression, high mortality rates among organ failure patients, increased utilization of taxpayer-funded dialysis, and growing demand for donated organs. AAKP has expressed strong support for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s recent appointments to the USPSTF of specialists familiar with interrelated heart, kidney, and metabolic issues.

AAKP Vice President and Chair of Policy and Global Affairs Paul T. Conway, a 49-year kidney patient and 29-year transplant recipient, stated, “People impacted by multiple chronic diseases, including kidney disease, understand the role elected and appointed leaders play in their personal health, science, and medical innovation as well as the availability of new, lifesaving diagnostics and treatments. They are sophisticated healthcare consumers and reject the idea of paying for avoidable medical interventions, with their own money or taxpayer funds, when new technologies allow for earlier disease detection and treatment and the avoidance of emergencies that jeopardize lives and livelihoods. Across the nation, from Maine to Washington, patients and families are angry with political leaders and medical elites that appear more committed to defending special interests and paternalistic systems than solving the everyday health needs of people and the frontline doctors they trust.” Conway is a former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Labor and a former Deputy Secretary for Health and Human Resources for Virginia. He is the past Chair of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Patient Engagement Advisory Committee (PEAC) and a member of the American Diabetes Association’s Kidney Disease Workgroup.

AAKP has leveraged the KidneyVoter™ program to educate people nationwide on the plight of those awaiting organ transplants and the overwhelming need to increase living organ donation. Increased living organ donation, improved transplant readiness, and greater opportunities for transplantation are national goals reinforced in 2019 through President Donald Trump’s bipartisan Executive Order on Advancing American Kidney Health. AAKP, alongside a broad coalition of patient organizations, transplant experts, and Congressional allies, is working to secure passage of the bipartisan Living Donor Protection Act (LDPA), S. 1552/H.R. 4582 and H.R. 4583. The legislation protects living organ donors from job and insurance discrimination based solely on their decision to donate a kidney to save another life, barriers cited most often by potential organ donors. The bipartisan bill is led by Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). It was voted out of the Senate HELP Committee on February 26, 2026, with full bipartisan support, the endorsement of AAKP, the united kidney community, and the American Council of Life Insurance (ACLI).

In 2018, with bipartisan support from Congress and the Trump Administration, AAKP and transplant professionals worked with the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) legal team and the DOL Wage and Hour Division to have DOL extend Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) protections for living organ donors, based on the original intent of the FMLA’s Congressional co-sponsors (click here to read the letter and click here to watch the video). Congressional passage of the LDPA in 2026 will codify the DOL’s 2018 FMLA job protections and prohibit insurers from discriminating against living donors.

The 2026 KidneyVoter™ campaign followed AAKP’s bipartisan All Kidney Policy is Local™ national campaign, which connected patients, organ donors, and caregivers with U.S. Congressional leaders in their home district offices and online during the 2026 Congressional summer recess. Since 2025, the campaign has resulted in over 300 targeted legislative and policy meetings with top Congressional decision-makers. Both the KidneyVoter™ and the All Kidney Policy is Local™ campaigns are central elements of AAKP’s Decade of the Kidney™ initiative, which supports kidney care innovation and implementation of the larger national kidney policy goals first outlined in the historic, bipartisan 2019 Executive Order on Advancing Kidney Health. AAKP provides advocacy skills and social media training for patients and organ donors through its Center for Patient Engagement and Advocacy and through its National Patient Meeting with a faculty of allied government affairs and political experts.

Follow AAKP on social media at @kidneypatient on Facebook, @kidneypatients on X, and @kidneypatients on Instagram, and visit http://www.aakp.org for more information. AAKP patient advocates advance bipartisan kidney policy including: passage of the bipartisan law modernizing the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) (2023); lifetime transplant drug coverage for kidney patients (2020); the historic Executive Order on Advancing American Kidney Health signed by President Donald Trump (2019); job protections for living organ donors under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) via the U.S. Department of Labor (2018); and Congressional approval of HIV positive organ transplants for HIV positive patients (2013).

MEDIACONTACT:
Brendan LaCivita
National and Medical Media Specialist
blacivita@aakp.org
(813) 906-7740

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SOURCE American Association of Kidney Patients