The Urologic Diseases Epidemiology Program funds descriptive and analytic epidemiology, including development and analysis of surveillance databases, cross-sectional surveys, prospective observational studies, and case-control studies (for evaluating rare diseases).
Key areas of interest include preventing disease, developing early markers of injury, defining risk factors for morbidity and mortality, and increasing evaluation of urologic disease measurements and outcomes in ongoing observational studies.
The program is dedicated to increasing the availability of epidemiologic data through both development of new databases and full utilization of existing Federal, State, and private sources of data. The United States Renal Data System (USRDS) is funded under a contract through the Renal Diseases Epidemiology Program of NIDDK. Researchers can request USRDS standard analysis file at http://www.usrds.org. NIDDK suggests the collection of kidney function data in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics.
NIDDK has established a national epidemiological research program, Urologic Diseases in America (UDA). The objectives of the UDA project include secondary data analyses of the following topics: (1) changes in the overall health care burden for individual urologic diseases; (2) changes in physician practice patterns for each urologic disease; (3) changes in demographics of persons with urologic disease; (4) the impact of specific urologic diseases, especially diseases of the prostate, on the minority populations of the U.S.; (5) documentation of new and evolving therapies for urologic disease and their potential impact on treatment outcomes and health care costs.
The project ran from 2001 to 2007. The resultant compendium can be found at http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/statistics/uda/index.htm.
For further information, contact Dr. Paul Eggers, Urologic Diseases Epidemiology Program Director.
