Research & Position Papers
Independent · Peer-cited · No pharmaceutical funding
The Cold Ischemia Foundation produces policy-grade research the field does not produce for itself — because the organizations with the resources to do so have financial relationships that prevent them from asking the questions that most need answering.
Every white paper is fully cited to peer-reviewed sources, written for healthcare executives, policy stakeholders, and strategic partners, and released without restriction. No pharmaceutical funding. No institutional constraints. Download freely. Cite openly. The evidence belongs to everyone fighting for care partner justice.
Transforming Transplant
Advocacy
The Unseen Half: Transforming Transplant Advocacy Through Care Partner Integration
Mental Health as Clinical Infrastructure, Outcome-Aligned Systems Design, and the Lean Six Sigma Case for Structural Reform
The transplant care partner remains the healthcare system’s most consequential unmeasured variable. Approximately 500,000 individuals in the United States perform mandatory clinical-grade care labor as a condition of transplant listing — labor structurally invisible in cost accounting, excluded from governance frameworks, and absent from outcome measurement systems. Drawing on published meta-analyses, this paper makes the evidence-based case for four structural interventions and applies a Lean Six Sigma DMAIC framework to establish specific process capability targets for the transformed system.