LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The calls and emails started coming into

“You’re reaching out to the nephrologist, their primary care doctors, the dialysis units to get those records,” said Dr. Pooja Singh of Jefferson Health’s transplant institute in Philadelphia, where Evans received her new kidney. “That first patient getting transplanted for us was such a great moment for our program that the work didn’t feel like work after that.”A high school sports physical first spotted Evans’ kidney disease at age 17. While finishing her master’s degree and beginning to earn her Ph.D. at Temple University, she started dialysis — for nine hours a night while she slept — and was placed on the transplant list.

How long it takes to get a kidney transplant depends on patients’ blood type, medical urgency and a mix of other factors — including how long they’ve spent on the waiting list. Evans was first listed in April 2019. When the Jefferson transplant center unearthed her old lab tests, they found she should have qualified in September 2015.“Just for context, when I was still an undergrad I should have been on the list,” she said, recalling the anger she felt as she read the letter. What she called “a mind-blowing” credit of 3½ more years waiting also provided “a glimmer of hope” that she’d be offered a matching kidney soon.Evans got a new kidney on July 4 and is healthy again, and grateful the policy change came in time for her.

“You don’t know if people would be alive today” if it had been enacted earlier, she said. Still, that extra step of “making amends to fix the situation for those that we can — I feel like it’s very important and it’s very necessary if you’re truly wanting to bring more equity and equality into the medical field.”AP Videojournalists Tassanee Vejpongsa and Shelby Lum contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

A combination shot forSustained by a $53 billion endowment, the nation’s wealthiest university is testing whether it can be a bulwark against

what his administration calls antisemitic activism on campus, which Harvard sees as an affront toCiting campus protests against Israel as proof of “antisemitic violence and harassment,” the Trump administration has demanded that Harvard make broad leadership changes, revise its admissions policies, and audit its faculty and student body to ensure the campus is home to many viewpoints.

Harvard President Alan Garber disputed the government’s allegations, saying in a letter this month that the school is nonpartisan and has taken steps to root out antisemitism on campus. He insisted that Harvard is in compliance with the law, calling the federal sanctions an “unlawful attempt to control fundamental aspects of our university’s operations.”Students walk through Harvard Yard during commencement ceremonies at Harvard University, Thursday, May 29, 2025, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)