In memoriam: John Stivelman
Dr. John Stivelman, professor emeritus (Nephrology) passed away on July 26, 2026, from ALS. He was 75.
Born in 1950 in Los Angeles, California, Stivelman earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University in 1972 and was awarded a Fulbright-Hayes Scholarship to Freie Universitaet in Berlin, which he declined. After receiving his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 (and inducted into the Beta Chapter of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society), he completed his internship and residency at UCLA and nephrology fellowship at Harvard.
He was recruited to the Harvard faculty in 1984 and subsequently served on the faculty at the University of Arizona and Emory University before relocating to Seattle and joining the University of Washington in 1999. He was appointed professor emeritus upon his retirement in 2015.
As chief medical officer of Northwest Kidney Centers (1999-2010), he set the standards for clinical care at a time of the organization’s rapid growth, both in terms of the number of dialysis units and the number of patients under its care. He was instrumental in establishing an intense curriculum for UW nephrology fellows for their training in dialysis care and many of his trainees still practice in the community and have become community leaders in dialysis care through their roles as medical directors of dialysis units.
Nationally known as a consummate clinician and scholar with deep expertise in dialysis care and as a fervent patient advocate, he was deeply influential in setting public policy and standards for clinical care for patients undergoing long-term dialysis in the United States.
He was a member of the workgroup set up by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) – the precursor of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) – to develop the End Stage Renal Disease Medical Evidence Report, used to register new end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients and establish Medicare entitlement.
He was particularly interested in management of anemia in patients on long-term dialysis and advanced the use of a then new therapy, erythropoietin (EPO), in the management of anemia in patients with kidney failure. He was a member of the first-ever National Kidney Foundation Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative (NKF KDOQI) workgroup for managing anemia in people needing maintenance dialysis.
From 2001-2004, he served as chair of the ASN/RPA Joint Committee on Physician Accountability, a collaborative historical committee formed by the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) and the Renal Physicians Association (RPA) to address professional standards, performance tracking, and quality metrics for nephrologists. He also chaired and served on the Medical Review Board of two of the 18 ESRD Networks in the United States – ESRD Network 6 and ESRD Network 16.
He is survived by his brother, William Stivelman, MD.