Popham Kidney Support

Popham Kidney Support is a patient-rooted charity honoring the legacy of Paul Popham, championing optimism, resilience, and holistic well-being for those living with kidney disease. Its mission centers on empowering the kidney community through emotional, financial, and physical support, fostering self-esteem, reducing isolation, and enabling informed decision-making. Core values emphasize patient-led initiatives, inclusivity, and needs-driven transformation, believing lasting impact arises from person-centred peer networks, advocacy, and practical interventions that address real-life challenges of renal conditions, prioritizing lived experience in governance and delivery for equitable, community-empowered change.

Thematic priorities target kidney health for children, young people, adults with chronic kidney disease, their families, and carers facing low-income hardships or disadvantage, supporting peer mentoring and peer support groups to combat isolation and build resilience, patient-led education enhancing knowledge of disease management, risk factors like high blood pressure and diabetes, and self-advocacy skills, welfare assistance for essential personal and household needs alleviating financial strain, hospital grants funding non-NHS items or services improving clinical care and patient comfort, advocacy and policy lobbying for systemic renal improvements, and public awareness campaigns promoting preventative health. Interventions favor holistic, therapeutic approaches including emotional counselling, practical financial relief, volunteer-led befriending, and community outreach strengthening family carer support and patient empowerment in daily living.

Exclusions encompass core operational costs, unrestricted funding, capital projects, non-kidney-related needs, or support outside Wales' renal community, with no repeat welfare aid within six months. Distinctive for its exclusive Welsh kidney focus, patient and carer co-design of services, transformative philosophy symbolized by the butterfly motif, robust volunteer networks, and collaborations with organizations like Kidney Research UK, it prioritizes grassroots renal patients receiving care in Wales, especially disadvantaged families, valuing evidence-based, holistic person-centred models led by those with lived experience of kidney disease challenges.