Jorge B. Cannata-Andia is the recipient of the 2013 ERA-EDTA award for contributions to ERA-EDTA.
He became a member of ERA-EDTA in 1982 and served his first term in the Council of the Association from 1993 to 1997 as an ordinary Council member. In 2002, he became Secretary-Treasurer till 2005, after which he became President up to 2008.
In his first term he collaborated with Jacques Bernheim on the successful re-launching of the ERA-EDTA Registry by making a number of adaptations according to the new needs and objectives of the Association. His main contributions, however, came during the periods he was Secretary-Treasurer and President. He played a crucial role in many of the Society’s activities such as making the ERA-EDTA administrative offices versatile and flexible to deal with all aspects of the Society, the creation of “Follow us”, setting up Post-Congress Council Meetings and creating the title of “Chairperson of the Administrative Offices”.
Thanks to his initiative the ERA-EDTA started supporting collaborative clinical trials and observational studies, as well as supporting translational research projects. Furthermore, during his terms as an Officer in the ERA-EDTA Council, he played a crucial role in improving or initiating a number of scientific and educative activities such as increasing the number of CME Courses, the launch of Fellowship Programs in 2006, the creation of NDT-Educational in 2004 and NDT-Plus in 2008, the installation of the first Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) in 2006, the establishment of ERA-EDTA Registry Courses in 2005 and starting lobbying for financial support for the QUEST project, and, now, thanks to this amount kept aside the ERA-EDTA has been able to finance the EQUAL project. In 2006 the ERA-EDTA Registry obtained, for the first time in the ERA-EDTA history, funds from the European Union for a project called “NephroQUEST” led by Carmine Zoccali and Kitty Jager. He was also instrumental in ERA-EDTA becoming part of EKHA, which is currently very active lobbying the European Community both for funds for renal diseases, but also for awareness issues. Currently he is the representative for ERA-EDTA at the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS).
This impressive list of actions has in part been the basis for the ERA-EDTA’s current successful activities and the present ERA-EDTA Officers are extremely fortunate to build further on this solid basis.
In addition, Jorge B. Cannata-Andia is also a respected and laudable scientist with a large number of highly appreciated publications in peer-review journals.
