Opinion
Video
Dr. Rickey on the Prevention of Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms Research Consortium
Author(s):
"PLUS was created to start laying down the foundation for implementing prevention science, and understanding things that helped maintain bladder health [and] things that are risk factors for progression into bladder disease," says Leslie Rickey, MD, MPH.
In this video, Leslie Rickey, MD, MPH, gives an overview of the Prevention of Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms Research Consortium. Rickey is an associate professor of urology and of obstetrics, gynecology & reproductive sciences at Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.
Transcription:
PLUS is funded by the NIH and the NIDDK, and the funding first started in 2015. It was created because there was an increasing awareness that while female urinary tract symptoms such as incontinence and overactive bladder, recurrent [urinary tract infection], had been really thought of as a quality-of-life, kind of annoying symptom complex, that really it was becoming a public health issue. So not only are there individual impacts in terms of physical, emotional, and mental health, but there are really large societal impacts as well: financial, work productivity, and use of the health care system. And while we have done lots of research on how to improve the treatment outcomes of the people in our offices and understand their symptoms, there had really been very little work on understanding, what is bladder health? How does someone keep their bladder healthy? How do you prevent these urinary tract symptoms from happening? PLUS was created to start laying down the foundation for implementing prevention science, and understanding things that helped maintain bladder health [and] things that are risk factors for progression into bladder disease. That's really been the main focus of the PLUS Consortium.
This transcription was edited for clarity.
