Dear Transplant Community:

On September 14, 2010, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) awarded the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) contract to the Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation (MMRF). The contract is now administered by the Chronic Disease Research Group (CDRG), a division of MMRF. Our team is honored to have been selected to serve the transplant community and will strive to continue the excellent work carried out from October 2000 to December 2010 by the Arbor Research Collaborative for Health. In the fall of 2010, we worked with Arbor Research staff to effect a smooth transition in contractors. Our goal is to provide minimal disruption to all stakeholders in the SRTR operation.

We would like to provide some background information on our organization and team. MMRF is the nonprofit research subsidiary of Hennepin Faculty Associates, the academic medical group that staffs Hennepin County Medical Center, a teaching hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota. CDRG is a division of MMRF, with research primarily focused in the areas of chronic kidney disease and organ transplantation. The SRTR leadership team is composed of MMRF employees as well as transplant experts from around the nation.

As we begin our work, we will address the various questions that members of the transplant community will understandably have. Here at the outset, we want to assure you that our basic intention for the coming year is to preserve and replicate existing SRTR operations. For example, analytical methods and publication schedules will remain essentially unchanged. We make special note of the fact that the January 2011 Program-Specific Reports were completed by the previous contractor, and we will use the same methodologies to create the July 2011 Program-Specific Reports. After that, we expect to examine current methods with an eye toward further refinement. Any future changes will occur only after careful study, coordination with HRSA and the OPTN, and advanced publicity to stakeholders.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at (877) 970-SRTR or srtr@srtr.org. Alternatively, you may contact the SRTR Project Officer at HRSA, Monica Lin, PhD, at MLin@hrsa.gov.

Initially, it is our goal that the community will see minimal changes in products and services put forth by the SRTR. In all aspects of our operation, we will strive to effectively communicate any future changes to SRTR products and services, including but not limited to changes to program-specific reports, the OPTN/SRTR annual data report, and statistical methodologies. We look forward to serving you.

Sincerely,

Bertram Kasiske, MD, FACP	Ajay Israni, MD, MS	Jon Snyder, PhD, MS
Project Director	Deputy Project Director	Director of Operations