Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

A call for civic engagement

Nature Reviews Nephrology volume 17, page 631 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

As witnesses to the health consequences of social discrimination, clinicians are uniquely positioned to build coalitions of stakeholders to address inequities and drive change. Such civic engagement is needed to ensure that all populations are given the opportunity to thrive.

As clinicians, it is our social responsibility to actively engage in identifying and eliminating factors that contribute to discrimination and structural racism. We are uniquely positioned to understand the link between social factors and illness — the social determinants of health — and can gain access to policy makers as a consequence of our social standing. My research and public advocacy journey began after my close friend, Hilda, passed away. Hilda was an undocumented immigrant in her twenties and a single mother of two young boys. She had kidney failure but was ineligible for Medicaid-funded scheduled dialysis and could only receive emergency dialysis when critically ill — usually every 6–7 days. As a consequence of her inadequate dialysis, Hilda was often hyperkalemic. After 2 years, she had suffered three near-fatal cardiac arrhythmias and her children faced constant anxiety and psychosocial distress. To give her children their best chance at a normal life Hilda identified an adoptive family and then stopped emergency dialysis. She passed away on Mother’s Day in 2014.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, Denver Health, Denver, CO, USA

    Lilia Cervantes

  2. Office of Research, Denver Health, Denver, CO, USA

    Lilia Cervantes

  3. Department of Medicine, University of Colorado, Aurora, CO, USA

    Lilia Cervantes

Authors
  1. Lilia Cervantes
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lilia Cervantes.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cervantes, L. A call for civic engagement. Nat Rev Nephrol 17, 631 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-021-00446-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-021-00446-y

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing