What a year! I have only been your IPTA President for a few months and in this short amount of time, I have been continuously amazed at the work our members are spearheading.

The IPTA Education Committee has continued to be active with the SMARTER Initiative, and recently published a summary of this work in the Pediatric Transplantation journal:

Raina R, Esquivel C, Smith S,et. al.
SMARTER Education for a Global Transplant Workforce.
Pediatr Transplant. 2025 Dec;29(8):e70222. doi: 10.1111/petr.70222. PMID: 41208055).
READ SUMMARY

They are also working with the Allied Health and Nursing Professionals Committee to establish the “SMARTER Allies” initiative, with the goal of increasing educational resources for our allied health members.

One of the goals for my IPTA Presidency is to engage our Asian colleagues and form meaningful collaborations with them. I was humbled on my visit to India whilst representing IPTA at ISOT to learn of the challenges and obstacles they face on a daily basis, and the extremely high numbers of patients they care for. They are doing some amazing work there and we have as much to learn from them as they do from IPTA. We are working on another potential visit in 2026 in collaboration with the Indian Academy of Pediatrics Nephrology subdivision, with the hopes of engaging more transplant professionals. Keep checking IPTA communications for more information.

As 2025 comes to an end and in the spirit of the upcoming holidays, gratitude has been on my mind. I decided to google the word gratitude, and this is the first definition that I found. “Gratitude is the feeling of thankfulness and appreciation for the positive aspects of life.” IPTA’s staff and its members have definitely brought positive energy into my life over the past year. Because of this, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude for the hard work and dedication of every IPTA member and staff in caring for children needing transplantation. Many of you have faced extremely hard obstacles this year and despite these challenges, you have continued to provide the best care possible for these children. You are truly inspiring.

In the US we celebrated Thanksgiving in November, which is a holiday that celebrates gratitude and encourages giving back to the community. When considering your charitable contributions this year, please keep IPTA in mind. Your donations support all of IPTAs efforts - from supporting Young Investigators to supporting Outreach Fellowships and Fellows symposiums. IPTA has accomplished many great things this year, and with your continued help and support, we will accomplish many more next year. Please give generously!

Happy Holidays! Wishing you all the best for the holiday season, and a healthy and prosperous 2026.

Yours,

Katherine Twombley
IPTA President

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IPTA 2029 Call for Hosting

Submitted by Dr. Tom Blydt-Hansen, MD, on behalf of the IPTA Council

Every two years, the IPTA Congress brings together clinicians and scientists from all parts of the world in the fields of pediatric transplantation. Its goals include to provide a forum that highlight advances in the field of transplantation, and delivery of education programs in underserved areas to enable access to transplantation globally. With these goals in mind, the choice of location and the process for making that choice should similarly seek to engage with membership globally.

Applications are now open from interested parties, the deadline for which to apply is February 15th, 2026.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO APPLY

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SMARTER Initiative Update

Submitted by Dr. Rupesh Raina, MD, on behalf of the IPTA Education Committee

Dear IPTA Members,

I am writing to share updates on the Cardiology Tx SMARTER Initiative, which continues to expand in scope and educational value. We have incorporated several new components aimed at strengthening our transplant cardiology curriculum for fellows, trainees, and multidisciplinary teams across IPTA.

VISIT THE SMARTER INITIATIVE PAGE

VISIT THE QUESTION BANK PAGE

1: Podcast & Lecture Series – Dr. Jonathan Johnson
Dr. Jonathan Johnson has completed an excellent podcast episode and an accompanying lecture based on the newest cardiology chapter in our transplant textbook. These resources provide high-yield, clinically relevant material that integrates foundational concepts with advanced management strategies for pediatric transplant cardiology.
VIEW SERIES

2: Journal Club – Led by Dr. Daniella Levy Erez
Dr. Levy Erez has prepared a focused Journal Club session centered on recent landmark cardiology and transplant-related publications. Her session includes structured discussion points, critical appraisal, and clinical implications for pediatric solid organ transplantation.
VIEW JOURNAL CLUB

3: New Trial Updates
We have added the latest trial updates relevant to pediatric heart and kidney transplant cardiology, including ongoing multicenter studies, recent FDA approvals, and emerging therapies that should be integrated into upcoming teaching modules.
VIEW UPDATES

4: Multiple Choice Question Expansion – Cardiology & Transplant
We have also expanded our Multiple Choice Question bank with new, high-quality, case-based cardiology questions tailored for transplant medicine. These include updated question stems, explanations, and references to ensure alignment with current guidelines and evidence.
VIEW QUESTIONS

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Committee Update

Submitted by Dr. Daniel Dulek, MD, on behalf of the IPTA ID Care Committee

The IPTA ID Care Committee continues to be active and energetic as we approach 2026. Led by Dr. Sonya Thomas, we renewed a longstanding tradition of providing a yearly seasonal update of influenza epidemiology and broadened this to include information on SARS-CoV-2 and RSV. The manuscript — ”Updates on vaccine-preventable respiratory viral infections in pediatric solid organ transplant recipients" — has been accepted for publication by Pediatric Transplantation and should be available online soon.

In addition, led by Dr. Gabriela Espinoza-Candelaria, we published a question focused-review of preventing infections in pediatric solid organ transplant recipients with asplenia/hypo-splenism.
READ REVIEW

Collaborative work continues on several topics including a collaboration between the ID Care Committee and the Allied Health and Nursing Professions Committee reviewing healthy living among adolescent solid organ recipients with a focus on infectious diseases. We anticipate this manuscript to be submitted soon. In addition, leveraging the international collaborations within our committee, we are developing a case-based review of tuberculosis prevention, diagnosis, and treatment in pediatric organ transplant recipients.

We are planning our IPTA ID Community meeting for January/February of 2026 and welcome any and all IPTA members with a desire to engage further with their inner ID-physician : ) (i.e. Anyone with an interest in or focus on infectious challenges to pediatric organ transplantation even if you are not subspecialty trained in ID or microbiology). Please email me if you would like to be included in this gathering (daniel.dulek@vumc.org).

Finally, we greatly enjoyed the ID content at the 2025 IPTA Congress and are happily gathering ideas for ID topics and content for IPTA 2027. If you have thoughts or opinions, feel free to share them with us.

Onward and Upward!

Sincerely,

Your IPTA ID Care Committee

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Committee Update

Submitted by Dr. Lyndsey Grover MD and Joshua Gossett, RN on behalf of the IPTA Membership Communications Committee

The IPTA Membership and Communications Committee is an engaged group of multidisciplinary individuals from all over the globe, such as Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Calgary and Spain. It is our mission to help connect and activate new and existing members in IPTA and the larger pediatric transplant community. In 2024-2025, we set a goal to hit over 1000 IPTA members through expanding membership into different geographical areas, as well as into different clinical disciplines that have been previously underrepresented. We were able to achieve that goal! However, through review of our membership list, it was found that many of those members were not up to date on their dues.

Under the direction of the IPTA Council, we were able to engage some of the past-due membership to retain them, and then we were able to clean up the membership list. We currently sit at around 700 paid members in IPTA.

We plan to continue to grow membership across the globe in this coming year through better data collection, targeted engagement, and increasing activity through the IPTA Listserv!

Go to the Members Area to sign up!

Over this past year, our committee has taken on the work of publishing the IPTA Newsletter! We were able to activate Google Translate on our IPTA webpage to make it easier for non-English speaking professionals and patients to engage. Lastly, we re-launched our Instagram account, and a new BlueSky account! Please check them out!