Supporting future leaders in kidney health: The Bogetic Nephrology Research Fellowship

Thanks to the generosity of a kidney transplant recipient and donor couple, future leaders in Nephrology at Monash Health will have extra support to pursue an academic career. 
 
‘The Bogetic Nephrology Research Fellowship’ has been created thanks to Dragan Bogetic, a recent living donor kidney transplant recipient, and his wife and kidney donor Dr Zorica Bogetic, who have a close history with care at Monash Health and have invested so generously in its future.  
 
Zorica trained and worked as a neonatologist in Serbia before migrating to Australia and working at Prince Henry’s Hospital and Monash Health in the Department of Medicine in the 1980s and 90s.  

Years later, the couple would experience their own journeys as patients at Monash Health undergoing a living donor transplant and making a heartfelt commitment to give back for future research into kidney health.  
 
‘This incredibly generous donation has given us an opportunity to promote the academic and research careers of the junior nephrologists in our department who we see as having great potential as future leaders locally, nationally and internationally,’ said Professor John Kanellis, Director of Nephrology. 
 
‘We are extremely grateful to the Bogetic family for trusting and investing in our department and Monash Health’s future.’  
 
We are proud to announce that Dr Jennifer Yo is the inaugural recipient of the fellowship award for her research proposal, ‘Early kidney damage after preeclampsia: a population-based cohort study’. Pre-eclampsia is a complication of pregnancy which causes high blood pressure and can affect your kidneys, liver and brain. 
 
For this research, Jennifer will be collaborating with experts in Sweden to look at the data from nearly 200,000 pregnancies and examine the impact of pre-eclampsia on longer-term renal function and on cardiovascular outcomes.  
 
Through this work, Jennifer will help us better understand how to improve the management of women during and after pregnancy, particularly when preeclampsia has a high likelihood of adversely affecting their longer-term kidney and cardiovascular health. 
 
On behalf of Monash Health and the Nephrology Department, thank you, Dragan and Zorica, for your generous gift, which will have such a positive impact on the next generation of nephrology researchers and the care we provide.