In 2016, living donor kidney transplant rates had remained stagnant for more than a decade. This prompted a group of kidney patients and living donors to get together to discuss the barriers to kidney transplantation and what could be done to overcome them. A key recommendation from this workshop was to establish a peer support program embedded within the hospitals to provide kidney patients, their families, and potential kidney donors with regular opportunities to see and hear from people who had successfully transplant experiences. Shortly after that, the Transplant Ambassador Program (TAP) was developed by a group of dedicated volunteers and became part of one of the 18 multidisciplinary research projects which would make up Can-SOLVE CKD, a national kidney research network of kidney researchers and patients.

Critical to TAP's integration into the 27 regional renal hospitals across Ontario, is an ongoing collaboration with the Ontario Renal Network (ORN) and Trillium Gift of Life (TGLN) as part of the Access to Kidney Transplant (AKT) Strategy which has a goal of increasing living donor transplants in Ontario to at least 300 annually by 2025.