American Kidney Fund Celebrates a Series of Accolades for Educational and Advocacy Resources

COVID-19 blog series, Kidney Kitchen® among AKF wins in recent national award programs

ROCKVILLE, Md. (January 27, 2021) — The American Kidney Fund (AKF) received recognition for several of its resources throughout the second half of 2020. Working with leading education and advocacy experts, AKF uses quality, creative approaches to help the 37 million Americans living with kidney disease, and the millions more at risk, in their fight against the disease.

Notable achievements include:

• Silver from the Digital Health Awards for the COVID-19 series on AKF's Advocacy blog and Merit from the Digital Health Awards for the COVID-19 series on AKF's Kidney Today blog. Both blog series were launched as soon as COVID-19 hit the United States to provide kidney disease patients — who are at high risk for serious cases of COVID-19 — with timely and accurate information about the coronavirus.
• Gold from the dotCOMM Awards and Silver from the Digital Health Awards for AKF's Kidney Kitchen® website, a comprehensive resource for the strict renal diet that provides easy-to-understand nutritional education and practical advice for kidney patients and their caregivers.
• Gold from the MarCom Awards, Silver from the Digital Health Awards and two Bronze from the Omni Awards for AKF's How Well Do You #KnowYourKidneys? on-the-street video, which tested how well people around Washington, D.C. know their kidneys as part of the Know Your Kidneys™ campaign.

Other accolades AKF received include:

• Gold from the National Health Information Awards for AKF's FIRST30: Advice When Starting Dialysis video
• Silver from the Digital Health Awards for the issue of AKF's monthly Kidney Kitchen e-newsletter highlighting the vegan and vegetarian recipe collections
• Bronze from the Digital Health Awards for the Kidney Today Meet Your Treatment Team blog series
• Bronze from the Digital Health Awards for AKF's kidney disease educational content on Facebook
• Bronze from the National Health Information Awards for AKF's kidney disease fact sheets
• Merit from the Digital Health Awards for the Spring 2020 issue of AKF in Action, AKF's print newsletter for patients, featuring information on potassium from AKF's Beyond Bananas™ campaign and AKF's 2020 Hero of Hope at The Hope Affair
• Merit from the National Health Information Awards for the Spring 2019 issue of AKF in Action dedicated to Kidney Kitchen, featuring recipes, nutritional information and more

"Living with kidney disease is never easy, but 2020 presented an especially great challenge for kidney patients," said LaVarne A. Burton, AKF president and CEO. "Through our two blog series providing important updates throughout the pandemic and resources like Kidney Kitchen easing the everyday burden of managing the strict renal diet, kidney patients across the nation turned to AKF and our resources to help manage one of the most difficult years in recent memory. Putting patients first is one of the values that drives our organization, and we are honored to have received this recognition for our work."

With these awards during the second half of the year, AKF's educational resources received 26 awards in total in 2020.

AKF's educational campaigns are made possible through generous support from its corporate partners. Kidney Kitchen is funded with support from Akebia Therapeutics, Inc., AstraZeneca, Sanofi-Genzyme and Satellite Healthcare, and educational resources are provided by The Cooking Doc®. Know Your Kidneys is made possible by Janssen Inc., part of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson. AstraZeneca is the sole supporter of the Beyond Bananas campaign. The FIRST30 campaign is supported by Amgen.