Hireé Dugassa
Supervisor(s): Dr. Rahul Chanchlani
Award: KRESCENT Summer Studentship
Institution: McMaster University
Year: 2026
Project Title: How Much Kidney Function Does It Take to Feel Like Yourself Again?
Biography
Hireé Dugassa is a Medical Student at the University of British Columbia, currently training in the Vancouver Fraser Medical Program. She completed a Bachelor of Health Sciences, where she developed a strong interest in the intersection of clinical medicine, research, and health equity. Born and raised in Mississauga, Hireé has always been fascinated by medicine and interested in advancing equity in medicine. Hireé is involved in clinical and community-based research focusing on health disparities, with a particular emphasis on improving access to care for marginalized populations and global health. She hopes to pursue a career that integrates patient care with advocacy and research to address systemic inequities in healthcare. Outside of medicine, Hireé enjoys reading, travelling, exploring new coffee shops, and going to the gym.
Lay Summary
Kidney failure reaches into almost every part of a person's life. Many people come to rely on dialysis, a treatment that cleans the blood when the kidneys no longer can. It keeps people alive, but it is hard on the body and often leaves them drained and weak. A kidney transplant can change that picture, though it does not always restore everything. Even after a successful transplant, many people still struggle with everyday tasks like climbing stairs, carrying groceries, or walking any distance.
The clearest way to understand how people are doing is to ask them. Patients fill out short questionnaires that measure their physical function, meaning how easily they manage daily activities. Alongside those answers, we track how well the new kidney is working, using a measure called eGFR.
Research has shown that lower kidney function tends to go hand in hand with poorer physical function. What is unclear is the shape of that link. Does physical function keep improving as the kidney works better? Or does it reach a point where extra kidney function adds little?
Purpose: Our aim is to map the full link between kidney function and physical function in people living with a kidney transplant. We especially want to find out whether there is a turning point, a level of kidney function beyond which feeling stronger no longer depends much on further improvement. Finding that level would help patients make sense of their own progress, and help care teams aim their support where it can do the most good.
Method: We will use information that transplant patients have already provided, so the project asks nothing more of them, without new samples or extra visits. For each person, we have both a physical function score and a measure of kidney function.
Our first step is to plot the relationship as a smooth curve, rather than sorting patients into broad groups. A curve shows the true shape of the link.
Next, we will look closely at an odd feature of the data. Many patients share the exact same score, which can happen when a questionnaire cannot tell apart people who are all doing fairly well. We will confirm that this pattern does not affect our results.
We will then account for other things that affect physical function, including age, other health conditions, time since the transplant, and the type of donor. This lets us be sure that kidney function itself, and not something else, is driving what we see.
Finally, we will weigh the size of the change against what patients themselves consider a real, noticeable difference in daily life.
Anticipated Outcomes: We expect to confirm that lower kidney function goes together with lower physical function. The more useful part is the shape of that link: we expect a steep rise in physical function as kidney function improves, followed by a levelling off, where further gains add little. We also expect the change to be large enough that patients would really feel it in daily life.
Patient Engagement: Because this project uses information that patients have already shared, it does not involve recruiting new participants, and so no patient partner leads the analysis itself. To keep the work grounded in patients' real experiences, we plan to involve patient partners in two ways: helping us decide what counts as a meaningful change in physical function, and helping us share the results in clear, everyday language.
Relevance to Patients and Community: The patient voice is at the heart of this work, since the scores come straight from patients describing their own lives. Our findings could help people with a transplant set realistic expectations and better understand how their bodies are responding. They could also strengthen the case for protecting kidney function over the long term, and guide care teams in spotting who would benefit most from added support, such as exercise programs before or after surgery.
Conclusion: By listening to patients and looking at the full shape of the link between kidney function and physical function, we hope to offer clearer answers about which levels of kidney function matter most for helping people feel strong, active, and like themselves again.