Her kidney transplant became the subject of her research at Georgia Tech
When Blaire Bosley began her Ph.D. program in digital media at Georgia Tech in March of 2020, she was juggling her studies, the burgeoning pandemic and the process of getting on the kidney transplant list.
“I would say it was a balancing act that some days I was not successfully doing,” Bosley told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. At the time, she had been living with chronic kidney disease for four years.
She had largely managed her kidney disease through medications and dietary restrictions, but starting the transplant process was an entirely new experience for the then-23-year-old. Frequent hospital visits and lab tests, combined with her classes, made for an overwhelming season of life.
Luckily, Bosley found a kidney donor within a month of starting at the university, when a family friend stepped in to help. The experience soon reshaped how she approached her research.
With undergraduate and master’s degrees both in history, Bosley tied her solitary experience of being on the kidney transplant list to her research on youth activism. Through this, she developed an interactive digital experience to help people with chronic kidney disease navigate the transplant process and communicate with others waiting for a kidney.
“My hope is that the users are people who are starting the transplant process, ensuring that those people who are starting it have as many resources as possible before they kind of make this decision,” she said.
Bosley initially began her Ph.D. by extending research from her master’s, which focused on a group of young Black women who were imprisoned during the Civil War known as the Leesburg Stockade Girls, or the Stolen Girls. But while interviewing a subject, she decided to take her work in a new direction.
“He suggested that I do a project that focused on my own experience, so that really helped me shift what I was working on,” Bosley said. “It also kind of inspired me to be more reflective.”
She began thinking about how her own care differed from others’, and how people’s specific health needs and identities can make equal care difficult to achieve.
“I was able to go to my kidney transplant support group and recruit amazing collaborators who were also willing to share their experiences,” Bosley said, highlighting the role her community played in shaping the project.
Through those interviews, she found three main pillars where chronic kidney disease patients were experiencing the most confusion: medications and their side effects, dietary restrictions and resources in the transplant process.
As part of her dissertation, Bosley developed a web-based application called “A Post-Transplant Journey” that allows users to share concerns and connect with other kidney disease patients to discuss challenges and find support. One feature allows users to virtually explore real-world spaces from home, including grocery stores where they can pick up items and receive detailed information about how those foods align with their dietary needs.
For now, Bosley plans to develop components of the application for smartphones, and she has big plans to expand its accessibility. She hopes to create versions compatible with virtual or augmented reality — and to make the application available through organizations that provide in-person resources and support to transplant patients.
With graduation just a few months away, Bosley is starting conversations with transplant support groups, focusing on Georgia and the South.
“I don’t want to just base everything off of my opinions and my insight when I know there’s so many amazing people out there, including my collaborators, who have shared insight with me and shared knowledge with me about their transplant process,” she said.
For her, the project is more than immersive technology — it’s about turning empathy into action, giving transplant patients a space to support each other.
“What are the actions that need to take place or happen for people to not just feel empathetic, but also do the work to become empathetic,” she asked.
