Seattle-based nonprofit dialysis provider Northwest Kidney Centers intends to make a $15 million grant over the next five years.
The grant will support startup projects within the University of Washington’s Center for Dialysis Innovation.The center, a collaboration of the UW Medicine Kidney Research Institute and UW Biomaterials/Bioengineering, opened November 2016.
We are incredibly grateful to Northwest Kidney Centers for the gift to launch the Kidney Research Institute in 2008, and now for such a significant boost to the momentum of the Center for Dialysis Innovation. - Jonathan Himmelfarb
The grant from Northwest Kidney Centers represents 60 percent of the center’s five-year fundraising target of $25 million.
The grant builds on longstanding ties. After the University of Washington team invented technology for ongoing dialysis in 1960, independent Northwest Kidney Centers was founded in 1962 to provide the life-sustaining treatments. It was the first dialysis organization in the world.
As a nonprofit health care provider, Northwest Kidney Centers provides extensive community benefits. For example, gifts from Northwest Kidney Centers to UW Medicine fund fellowships for training nephrologists, and provide ongoing support for the Kidney Research Institute, a collaboration of Northwest Kidney Centers and UW Medicine established in 2008.
We are excited about the Center for Dialysis Innovation because it brings together creative, entrepreneurial, can-do minds from a wide range of fields including nephrology and bioengineering. This team also wants to involve people living with kidney disease to help direct the center’s focus. - Joyce F. Jackson, Northwest Kidney Centers president and CEO.
View photos from the Center for Dialysis Innovation (CDI) Open House on March 9, 2017.