Engraft Learning Health Network Honored by the National Marrow Donor Program
Post Date: January 7, 2025 | Publish Date:
Engraft Learning Health Network at Cincinnati Children’s recently received the National Marrow Donor Program’s Dennis Confer Innovate Award, which recognizes an individual or group whose work has resulted in new solutions that have driven improvements in transplant outcomes or experiences for patients, donors and/or providers.
Engraft is a network of experts from 15 health systems across the country that collaborate, innovate, share and conduct research to advance health outcomes for the transplant and cellular therapy community. The network is led by Christopher Dandoy, MD, MSc, executive director; John Huber, MS, lead analyst; Georgia Kent, MHA, program manager; and Steffani Maier, DNP, quality improvement director.
Thanks to this network, Dandoy says, “We’ll be able to see the data from each center, analyze it, and be able to say, ‘They’re doing it better than us. How can we improve?’ And then if we’re doing a really great job, we have the opportunity to be able to help our colleagues at other centers. And it can apply to many different things, whether it’s chronic graft-versus-host disease assessment or maybe it’s long-term follow-up for survivors, making sure that everyone gets the same assessments that they need.”
Stella Davies, MBBS, PhD, MRCP, co-executive director of the Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute and division director of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Immune Deficiency, says this collaboration offers a much faster way to affect change than conducting a study and getting it published. “The average amount of time for a good idea to get into clinical practice is about 15 years,” she says. “That’s way too long. The best time to solve a problem is now, and to do that you need everybody there, everybody rowing the boat in the same direction. With Engraft, that strategy, we expect to make important change in less than a year. That’s innovation.”
Dandoy says the recognition provides motivation for achievements yet to come. “By connecting stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem, we’re able to identify challenges, co-create solutions, and implement practices that improve patient care. This award is not just a celebration of what we’ve achieved but also a reminder of the work that still lies ahead to further improve transplant outcomes for patients and their families.”
Watch a video about the Engraft Learning Network
Read about Engraft’s design, early successes, and future goals in this article recently published online in Transplantation and Cellular Therapy.
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