American Association of Kidney Patients Inc

The American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP) took its remarkable place in advancing patient advocacy and kidney disease education. Initially association started with six dialysis patients at King County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York in 1969. Since then AAKP intended to establish an organization with a voice of kidney patient in national health care arena. The organization provides the patients educational resources to encourage and improve their livelihood and giving the awareness on kidney dialysis, transplant and other sickness related renal disorders to their family members with a sense of community. The association provides research work on primitive dialysis of patients and other renal disorders with their regular follow-up and patient’s response towards the treatment.

AAKP is originally called themselves as NAPH (National Association of Patients on Hemodialysis, which later changed to AAKP) a non-profit patient-centric group association. In order to fight against renal diseases and provide awareness AAKP association joined with other patients groups of the Medicare End Stage Renal other patient groups to fight for the enactment of the Medicare End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Program and testifies before congressional committees with the public support and by creating a newsletter (the forerunner of today’s AAKP RENALIFE) to keep everyone informed. The effort of this association was crowned success in the 1972 while the Congress endorsed the program that continues to provide Medicare funding for dialysis and kidney transplantation.

With the initial and critical fight for the Medicare ESRD Program, AAKP focused on the other important issues to establish a national organisation to preserve the visibility and influence of patients with Congress and to develop national, educational and supportive programs. With great effort of intention to provide Kidney patients services the association grown into a nationally recognized patient organization and provides its services over 1 million people yearly. The dedication on providing patients with the education and knowledge necessary to improve of quality of life and quality of health remained remarkable.