Katie Rizzolo: Dialysis Care for Undocumented Immigrants

We interview Katherine Rizzolo about her work with Lilia Cervantes on implementing policies to provide dialysis care in the undocumented immigrant population. We talk about how the experience of undocumented immigrants differs from those with citizenship without insurance, tools she used from implementation science in this work, the path to policy change in Colorado, and the role of implementation science in policy change. Ah, implementation science: making common sense and decency incredibly rigorous.

Mentioned on today's show:

Cervantes L, Rizzolo K, Tummalapalli SL, Wainstein M, Glasgow RE, Jolles MP. Use of a Context- and Equity-Focused Implementation Science Framework to Aid the Design of Clinical Trials. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2025 Jun 1;36(6):1197-1200. doi: 10.1681/ASN.0000000633. Epub 2025 Jan 17. PMID: 39823190; PMCID: PMC12147963.

Cervantes L. Dialysis in the Undocumented: Driving Policy Change with Data. J Hosp Med. 2020 Aug;15(8):502-504. doi: 10.12788/jhm.3319. PMID: 31891561; PMCID: PMC7518140.

Nilsen, P. Making sense of implementation theories, models and frameworks. Implementation Sci 10, 53 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-015-0242-0

Proctor EK, Powell BJ, Baumann AA, Hamilton AM, Santens RL. Writing implementation research grant proposals: ten key ingredients. Implement Sci. 2012 Oct 12;7:96. doi: 10.1186/1748-5908-7-96. PMID: 23062065; PMCID: PMC3541090.

Rizzolo K, Ressalam J, Robledo K, et al. Participant Experiences in a Kidney Failure Care Intervention in the Navigate-Kidney Study. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(11):e2548506. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.48506