PROJECT SUMMARY Health services research (HSR) and data science are rapidly growing fields that have enormous implications for women’s health research in pelvic floor disorders (PFDs) such as urinary incontinence, fecal incontinence, and pelvic organ prolapse. The AUGS/Duke Urogynecology Clinical Research Educational Scientist Training (UrogynCREST) program will prepare participants to recognize the critical role that data play in delivering high quality health care. The program brings together expertise in health services and women’s health research, biostatistics, decision science, and data science. It will target assistant professors in urogynecology from across the country who seek successful careers in HSR and data science. The program leverages the American Urogynecologic Society infrastructure to recruit participants with diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds who have interest in a broad range of conditions resulting from PFDs. Three cohorts will each spend 2 years in the program. The UrogynCREST program is an interactive, virtual, and creative educational program with centralized activities organized at Duke and delivered by distance through an on-line learning platform developed specifically for academia and designed to support teaching, research, and collaboration. A diverse faculty has been assembled with expertise in data sciences and the advanced methodology required to perform HSR and participants will obtain skills through a combination of didactic and interactive coursework and training in the regulatory requirements and responsible conduct of research necessary to work with healthcare databases. Nationally recognized HSR clinical mentors and peer mentors will assist with identification of appropriate and existing database(s) to address the question and participants will perform hands-on manipulation of data through extraction, cleaning, and analysis with biostatisticians. Mentors will guide protocol development and each participant’s project will culminate in the publication of a a peer-reviewed manuscript. In addition, analysis datasets, workflow and analysis codes, project metadata and tools will be made publicly available using either the Duke Research Data Repository (RDR) or a designated repository as specified in original data use agreements with the source. Yearly in-person meetings at the annual American Urogynecologic Society meeting will encourage networking and the development of partnerships among participants from various institutions, as well as interactions with the mentors and other researchers in the field. This creative multidisciplinary, multi-institutional educational initiative is unprecedented in the field of urogynecology and the program will shape future scientific leaders in urogynecology by encouraging the development of clinician-scientists and provide the skills and resources for invigorating data discovery and tools for investigations in HSR specifically addressing pelvic floor disorders.

PROJECT NARRATIVE The AUGS/DUKE UrogynCREST program will teach participants how to utilize large datasets to perform research that will improve the delivery of high-quality health care for patients with pelvic floor disorders and encourage reproducible research. By providing creative educational activities that focus on research skills development and bringing together expertise in health services research, biostatistics, decision science, and data science, the program will add structure to the health data science education for assistant professor level faculty in urogynecology. Overall, the program will shape future scientific leaders in urogynecology by encouraging the development of clinician-scientists and provide the skills and mentorship for invigorating data discovery and tools for investigations in health service research specifically addressing pelvic floor disorders.