Merle Kataoka-Yahiro: NIH NIGMS PIKO Associate Director, Nephron Editorial Board Member, National KDSAP Panel Speaker

NIH NIGMS PIKO Associate Director

Dr. Merle Kataoka-Yahiro, DrPH, MS, APRN, professor, will serve as an Associate Director for the Professional Development Core of National Institute of Health (NIH) National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to establish the Center for Pacific Innovations, Knowledge, and Opportunities (PIKO) to improve the health and wellbeing of Indigenous Pacific People (IPP) and other medically underserved populations in Hawaii led by Joseph Keaweaimoku Kaholokula, PhD, professor and chair of the Native Hawaiian Health and Neal A. Palafox, MD, MPH, professor of Family Medicine and Community Health, of the John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM). This is a $15 million, five-year Institutional Development Award Networks for Clinical and Translational Research (IDeA-CTR) and represents a partnership between the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii Pacific University, Chaminade University of Honolulu, and a statewide network of community-based organizations (CBO).

Nephron Editorial Board Member

Kataoka-Yahiro has been invited as a new Editorial Board Member for the peer-reviewed journal “Nephron”, an established monthly journal of kidney disease and health and renal medicine with more than four decades of track record under Karger publisher. Nephron will soon have a new section titled “World Kidney Health” (WKH) under the International Federation of Kidney Foundations – World Kidney Alliance (IFKF-WKA). The WKH section aims to cover a broad range of global kidney health related issues from kidney health and kidney pathologies to issues related to patients with kidney disease, patient centeredness and patient care, prevention and management of kidney diseases, healthcare environment and public health policy pertaining to kidney disease. The section will publish clinical research, patient-reported outcomes, consensus statements and position papers from IFKF or other kidney patient organizations. Through WKH, Nephron will also serve as a platform to share the experiences and opinions of patients themselves or their caregivers and care-partners.

National KDSAP Panel Speaker

Kataoka-Yahiro was recently invited as one of three final panelists (along with Dr. Will Ross, MD, MPH from Washington U. School of Medicine, Associate Dean for Diversity, Professor of Medicine in Renal Division and Dr. Kerri Cavanaugh, MD, MHS from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Associate Professor and Medical Director of the Vanderbilt Dialysis Center) to speak at a national annual meeting of the Kidney Disease Screening and Awareness Program (KDSAP) Chapters on August 28, 2021 held at USC. KDSAP was created and founded by Li-Li Hsiao, MD, PhD, Harvard College and is a student-run organization targeting college students and aims to provide opportunities for community outreach to raise public awareness and promote early detection of chronic kidney disease. Students who participated were from Amherst, Augustana, Brown, Boston, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Dartmouth, Emory, Harvard, John Hopkins, Princeton, Rutgers, and Tufts and University of Alabama, Connecticut, Maryland, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Southern California, and Texas at Austin.