NIDDK News
NKUDIC Coordinating Panel Meets
Offers Guidance for Upcoming NKUDIC Projects
The National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse’s (NKUDIC) coordinating panel met in the spring to share information and help guide the NKUDIC’s annual project agenda. Sixteen panel members representing kidney and urologic organizations outside the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provided updates of their groups’ activities.
Consumer Literacy
Addressing the issue of consumer literacy, Valerie Monaco, Ph.D., assistant professor at the
University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Medicine, said that only 30 percent of people completing
a college degree are capable of handling long, complex material requiring them to make text inferences, and only about 4 to 5 percent of high school graduates are considered proficient readers. To improve online readability for low-literacy readers, Monaco recommended
simplifying text: using shorter words and sentences, assessing reading level with
Microsoft Word tools, and writing at a sixth- to eighth-grade reading level putting important information at the top of the page keeping content in a single column using linear navigation and limiting hypertext
Women’s Urologic Health
On the topic of women’s urologic health, Debuene Chang, M.D., said the first step in building the science base for future health studies in this area is to gather available information, beginning with an extensive literature review. Chang, who is the program director for women’s urologic health, Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and
Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), said a forum for thought leaders would help define and formulate questions essential for research and outreach.
Frequently occurring urologic conditions in women, according to Chang, are
Chang’s office is working collaboratively with other NIH and Government entities, including the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Aging, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
NKUDIC
Kathy Kranzfelder, director of the NKUDIC, gave an overview of the 19-year-old Clearinghouse, discussing primary functions and publications that are distributed to the health community and public. She explained that the NKUDIC migrated its files from the Combined Health Information Database to the NIDDK Reference Collection, which allows the NKUDIC to better catalog books and book chapters, newsletters, and journals not indexed by PubMed.
The NKUDIC is planning a customer satisfaction survey to gauge the usefulness of Clearinghouse
materials’ content and design. Customer satisfaction with Clearinghouse services remains high.
National Kidney Disease Education Program
In discussing the National Kidney Disease Education Program’s (NKDEP) goals and initiatives, Elisa Gladstone, the program’s associate director, said the NKDEP focuses on high-impact interventions for high-risk patients.
One of the NKDEP’s top campaigns targets African-American family reunions. The initiative was recognized as one of the top multicultural campaigns of the year by PRWeek and won an NIH Plain Language Award.
The NKDEP also launched a laboratory initiative as part of an effort to encourage labs to routinely report estimated glomerular filtration rates (eGFR). The NKDEP has received NIH evaluation funds to determine how many U.S. labs are reporting eGFR and by what methods.
The coordinating panel will meet again next year.
NIH Publication No. 07–5743
November 2006
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