Alberta’s research priorities to advance organ donation and transplantation: an ecosystem-based and consensus-driven approach to strategic research planning.

The Alberta Transplant Institute designed a strategic research planning initiative to address the unique research needs of organ and tissue donation and transplantation in Alberta. Bringing together the broad Alberta donation and transplantation ecosystem, this initiative created an effective mechanism to link a region’s research expertise with system -identified and patient, family, and donor-identified challenges to create a unified, prioritized body of key research needs. Patient, family, and donor partners were integrated into every stage of this initiative. We applied the Nominal Group Technique methodology to create consensus priorities, divided into five topic areas spanning the full spectrum of organ donation and transplantation science, policy, and practice. The consensus-building process involved a survey, 10 virtual working group sessions