The SMARTER Allies framework was an important expansion of the IPTA educational strategy. Allies programming formally acknowledges the importance of Allied Health and Nursing Professionals (AHNP) in transplant care and appropriately adapts the SMARTER educational umbrella beyond exclusive physician-centric education to other multidisciplinary members who are vital to the transplant team and provide significant care to patients outside of the operating room. SMARTER Allies will allow us to thoughtfully craft high-quality, case-based education specific to AHNP while staying true to the core pillars of IPTA’s educational mission of equity, globalness, and commitment to continuous quality improvement. The Allies framework has also supported Council approval for transition of the IPTA Virtual Education Symposium to be the flagship meeting for AHNP-focused education.

Beyond these developments, the IPTA Education Committee plans to continue executing the Society’s strategic plan by strategically deploying the SMARTER Initiative, expanding trainee focused education, co-sponsoring educational programs with International Society of Organ Transplantation (ISOT), and pilot-testing novel modalities of education such as artificial intelligence. As IPTA’s flagship global education initiative, SMARTER will continue to create needs driven, case-based educational content with a focus on global equity and assessment driven improvement that can be applied to every organ system and clinical practice setting. External recognition of our work came in 2025 with the publication of SMARTER Education for a Global Transplant Workforce, which validated many of the Society’s current efforts and allowed us to expand SMARTER programming.

Enhancing education for fellows and trainees and reaching trainees in low and middle-income countries will continue to be an area of focus for the committee. The committee is working on planning fellows' specific education, and there is discussion around the format, feasibility, and timing of such an effort and how it will synergize with IPTA governance meetings. Fellows have also been included on Kidney Community case writers and moderators. Continuing to find ways to include fellows in our educational efforts allows them to become more engaged and interactive learners while continuing to build leadership skills and connections with others at the beginning of their careers all over the world.

In addition to Kidney Community, IPTA is teaming up with ISOT to co-sponsor a case-based webinar series that will take clinicians through a clinical scenario as opposed to traditional topic-based didactic learning. Each session will focus on a different organ system. The goal of this series is to reach trainees and clinicians that would not typically have access to case-based education (those located far from regional hub centers, etc.) with a specific focus on Asia and other underserved areas around the world. Content development and invited speakers will be provided by IPTA while ISOT will handle logistical details of program development and webinar delivery. Our series started on Jan 29th, 2026.

AI was also discussed as an emerging field of interest in transplantation. While still very early in our exploration of this topic, current discussion has revolved around identification of interested collaborators with relevant clinical and programming knowledge to ensure clinically relevant content, as well as potential uses of AI in education delivery modalities, clinical decision support and outcome assessment. This year we have planned role of AI in translation education seminar lead by subgroup of AI interest group led by Dr. Evgenia Preka and Dr. Rupesh Raina.

We completed a comprehensive analysis of national UNOS registry data examining recurrent glomerulonephritis following kidney transplantation. This work provides robust insights into post-transplant risk stratification and long-term management of recurrent glomerular disease. The findings are intended to inform clinical decision-making, guide surveillance strategies, and support future prospective studies and guideline development in post-transplant glomerulonephritis.

As new opportunities for collaboration arise, the Education Committee will continue to look for areas where we can strategically align education offerings and minimize duplication of efforts while maximizing long-term global impact. We will keep Council apprised of these collaborations and evolving timelines.