Last month, nephrology doctors, research scientist and patients from all over the world gathered for the 2025 Kidney Patients’ Global Summit to raise awareness regarding kidney disease and to put treatments and solutions on a fast track. The Global Summit has come a long, long, way in the 14 years since my Great State Arkansas hosted the AAKP meeting and was the first Summit to stream the conference all over the world from the Clinton Presidential Library.As with that Arkansas conference, watching and listening to the doctors and engineers from all over the world discussing and exchanging information and all working toward the same goal to make life better for patients, I was inspired by all the new things coming right around the corner that will no doubt help patients live longer and better lives with kidney failure. It made me feel so proud to be one of the few people left in this country that had to witness and endure the extreme hardship patients and their families confronted - often times, alone and without support- back when I was first introduced to kidney disease. What a wonderful experience this has been for me to be healthy and to help those that can't help themselves. To look back to the early seventies and think about what it was like back in September, 1970, in Little Rock, Arkansas, visiting with Dr. William J. Flanigan about what we needed to do and writing letters to Representative Wilbur Mills and anyone else that I could think of that I thought might be able to help. Rep. Mills was not my Congressman and did not really understand why I was writing him and not my Congressman, David Pryor, but I knew any federal funding would have to go through the House Ways & Means Committee and Mills was the Committee chairman. Today, some 50 years later, I am so proud of the Arkansans that played such a major part in getting federal funding for kidney treatment. As I understand how it happened,...
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