# NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PLUS CLINICAL SITE

> **NIH NIH U01** · NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $400,000

## Abstract

Project Summary
Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) are common in women and negatively impact activities of daily living
and quality of life, resulting in medical and psychological morbidity and enormous economic burden. Because
of the deleterious consequences of LUTS on women, understanding optimal bladder health is essential. Given
the complexity and heterogeneity of women with urinary symptoms, transdisciplinary research is needed to
screen for risk factors for the development of bladder symptoms, protective factors that facilitate optimized
bladder health, and mechanisms to target for prevention programs to disrupt causal pathways to bladder
symptoms To date, the literature on LUTS has mostly focused on non-Hispanic White women with health
insurance who present with symptoms and are already engaged with the healthcare system. Thus, extant
prevention and treatment approaches are not generalizable to vulnerable populations like minority and
underserved women. Significant gaps remain in understanding bladder health for minority and underserved
women, where significant health disparities exist. Well-designed longitudinal cohort studies of urinary
symptoms in diverse samples in which racial/ethnic minorities are well represented are severely lacking.
Consistent with the PLUS Research Consortium, our objective is to move beyond the absence of symptoms and
optimize bladder health as “a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being related to bladder
function.” Therefore, the primary goal of this project is to assess the influence of biological, psychosocial
(mind/behavior), interpersonal, institutional, environmental, and societal factors on bladder health among
diverse women using qualitative and quantitative approaches within the PLUS framework. The mixed-
methods approach of this project includes: Specific Aim 1. Conduct a longitudinal, observational study of
bladder health in a diverse cohort of adolescent and adult women with respect to race/ethnicity, age, income,
education, health literacy, insurance status, sexual orientation, and employment, Specific Aim 2. Determine
factors and behaviors that influence bladder health in diverse women, and Specific Aim 3. Create a screening
tool for bladder health that is reliable and valid across diverse women. We hypothesize that social
determinants of health, implicit bias, and discrimination will be significantly related to the trajectory of
bladder health and engagement with the healthcare system over time for LUTS. We also hypothesize that the
screener we develop will assess bladder health in all women (including diverse populations in which
disparities exist) and will identify women at risk for future bladder symptoms with high reliability, validity,
accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity and minimal burden to the respondent. The impact of this U01 will be
the curation of a novel knowledge base on risk and protective factors in diverse populations of women.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10248550
- **Project number:** 5U01DK126045-02
- **Recipient organization:** NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** James William Griffith
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $400,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-09-01 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10248550

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10248550, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PLUS CLINICAL SITE (5U01DK126045-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10248550. Licensed CC0.

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