Professor Stephen McDonald

Professor Stephen McDonald

  • Biography/ Background

    Prof Stephen McDonald is Director of the Adelaide EpiCentre. Established in January 2024 as a collaboration of Adelaide Medical School, the Central Adelaide Local Health Network and SAHMRI, this is a Centre for Clinical Epidemiology based at the Royal Adelaide Hospital which aims to support and improve the standard and scope of clinical research within the Local Health Network. He is the Executive Officer of the Australia and New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant Registry and associated research group focussed around the epidemiology of chronic kidney disease and organ donation and transplantation. Clinically he is a nephrologist based at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. He is the Clinical Director of Renal Services for Country Health SA, and chairs the SA Renal Clinical Network.

     Following nephrology training in Adelaide, he undertook a PhD examining relationships between early kidney and cardiovascular disease and inflammation among remote Aboriginal communities at Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin. In mid-2001 he returned to Adelaide to a post-doctoral position in the ANZDATA Registry, where he has been Executive Officer since 2006.

    His research interests centre around the epidemiology of renal disease, and especially the use of Registry data to analyse trends and outcomes of those receiving renal replacement therapy. Current areas of focus: effects of consumer engagement on Registry research and practice; Registry based clinical trials, pregnancy among dialysis and transplant patients; patterns of care and outcomes of kidney transplantation among indigenous Australians; waitlisting and allocation algorithms for kidney transplant recipients; and how Registry data informs clinical practice.

    He is a founding member of the Beat-CKD group, a collaboration of the ANZDATA Registry, Australasian Kidney Trials Network, Australasian Renal Guidelines group and the Renal Cochrane Centre. In 2018 he convened the Transplantation Society’s expert panel on access to transplantation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, which led to the formation of the National Indigenous Kidney Transplantation Taskforce which he leads. Key activities of this group are around implementation of change to improve equitable access to kidney transplantation in Australia. 

    More broadly, he has been integral in advancing the science and practice underlying use of Clinical Quality Registry data in Australia. He founded and is the co-academic lead of the SAHMRI Registries group, and was the inaugural chair of the Registries Special Interest Group of the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance.

     He has published over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles. His clinical interest and skills span the breadth of nephrology, including care of acute and chronic kidney disease, electrolyte disturbances and dialysis and kidney transplant patients.

  • Qualifications

    MBBS (Hons), University of Adelaide, 1991

    FRACP, 1997

    PhD, Flinders University of SA, 2004

    Thesis title: “Renal disease, cardiovascular disease and shared risk factors in remote Aboriginal communities”

     

     

    Fellow, International Society of Nephrology, 2025 

  • Awards & Achievements

    Member, Order of Australia, 2025

  • Teaching Interests

    Teaching interests are focussed at a research level on supervision of PhD students, and at a clinical level on 4-6th year medicla students during their attachement sto the nephrology service. He has supervised an number of PhD students in the area of epidemiological studies, mainly based around end-stage kidey disease incidene and outcomes. He currently supervises two PhD and one Masters student.

    He was a member of the National Examiners' Panel for the RACP Clinical Examination for a number of years, and subsequently joined the Senior Examiners' Panel in 2011. He has ongoing involvement  in teaching advanced clinical skills to physician trainees sitting this examination. He speaks regularly to general practitioner groups about kidney disease, and is involved in both the formal teaching and informal supervision (in the clinical environment) of undergraduate students.

  • Research Interests

    Research interests: 

    ANZDATA and ANZOD Registries.

     ANZDATA – Australia and New Zealand Dialysis and Transplantation Registry . This is a registry which is responsible for the collection, analysis and dissemination of information about treatment for end-stage kidney disease for Australia and New Zealand.

    The ANZOD  Registry collects information about deceased solid organ donors in Australia and New Zealand

    Both of these Registries are based at the SA Health and Medical Reseach Institute. Prof Stephen McDonald is the Executive Officer, and Kylie Hurst the Registry Manager. Core funding is provided by the Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority , the New Zealand Ministry of Health and Kidney Health Australia.

    These Registries fulfil a number of roles:

    1)      As the major source of data about incidence and treatment patterns of end-stage kidney disease, dialysis and transplantation they have a substantial input into health service planning at a jurisdictional level

     

    2)      They provide an extensive network of quality-assurance reports / data to individual units about a range of processes and outcomes in dialysis and transplantation

     

    3)      They provide the database and epidemiological / statistical expertise behind a wide network of research studies based on the Registry, involving local, interstate and international collaborations.

     

    There have been several successful PhD theses written in part or in full based upon these databases, together with a number of lesser degrees and projects.

     Indigenous renal disease

    Rates of chronic kidney disease among Aboriginal Australians are many times higher than those of non-indigenous Australians. The epidemiology of this problem and associated treatments are a major focus, particularly with respect to end-stage kidney disease.

    Beat CKD

    Prof McDonald leads the Adelaide arm of th Beat-CKD collaboration (beatckd.org). This collaboration links the national end-stage kidney disease Registry (ANZDATA) with the Australasian Kidney Trials Network, the renal Cochrane group and the CARI guidelines network. Particular areas of focus of the Adelaide group include the Registry based trials; the used of patient-reported outcomes in Registry analyses; data linkage in a variety of settings and methodological development.

  • Publications

    Prof Mcdonald has over 250 peer-reviewed publications in a wide variety of journals. For details, see attached list.

  • Professional Associations

    Prof McDonald is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian Society of Physicians, and Fellow of the International Society of Nephrology.

    He is a member of

    • Australia & New Zealand Society of Nephrology
    • Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand
    • American Society of Nephrology
    • Interntional Society of Nephrology
    • The Transplantation Society
    • International Society of Peritoneal Dialysis
    • Australasian Epidemiological Association

     

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Entry last updated: Saturday, 3 May 2025