Steve Shaevel, director of academic personnel at the UCLA School of Dentistry, and his wife, Gail, have been tapped to serve on an advisory board for a National Institutes of Health Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant that will help expand living donor renal transplantation.
One of the grant’s principal investigators, Dr. Jeffrey Veale, director of the UCLA Kidney Transplant Exchange Program, was the surgeon and part of the team that, in 2008, helped locate a kidney for Gail, who needed a transplant. The Shaevels were participants in a "kidney chain," a unique arrangement made possible by the National Kidney Registry, a computer program and the willingness of others to donate a healthy kidney to a stranger so that their loved one or relative can get one from another stranger in return. Steve donated his kidney — it wasn't a match for Gail — which was flown to northern California for transplantation in a patient at Stanford University Hospital.
Joining the Shaevels on the NIH advisory board are CEOs, directors and doctors who head up transplantation medical centers and transplant waiting lists.
