NIDDK FACES

Chang to Fill New Position as Director of Women’s Urology

New Post to Increase Awareness, Cooperation in the Field

Women’s urology problems are a silent epidemic. Though hundreds of thousands suffer from conditions like urinary incontinence and the pelvic pain of interstitial cystitis, patients are reluctant to talk about them. But that could all be changing with the appointment of Debuene Chang, M.D., the new director of women’s urology at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, or NIDDK.

The position is a new one at NIDDK, created in part to help bring new attention to a patient population that has long been a quiet minority in the field of urology.

“These problems have always been there,” said Chang. “We’re talking very large numbers. But some of the things in this field are not as well studied as they could be, and I would like to see that change.”

‘A Wealth of Experience’
Her arrival should provide a boost to researchers in women’s urology, said Josephine Briggs, M.D., the director of the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases. “Dr. Chang brings a wealth of experience to the position, and we are lucky to have her at NIDDK.”

Chang comes to NIDDK from private practice, after first establishing herself as a distinguished clinician at the Department of Veterans Affairs for the Northern California System of Clinics and the Contra Costa County Hospitals. She served both institutions as chief of urology.

A Harvard-educated physician, Chang completed surgical and urological residencies at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital before moving to California.

Connecting Researchers
Though Chang will act as a program director in the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases, her mandate at the outset will go beyond the responsibility of parceling out NIDDK resources. Instead, she said she hopes to function as a hub, linking previously unconnected researchers.

“The priorities are to hear more from the outside world about what we need and to put people in touch with each other,” she said. “We want to be the point people to coordinate this.”

To help push along collaboration and conversation, Chang said that NIDDK plans to host a series of meetings designed to bring disparate researchers together. Once assembled, Chang said she hopes these doctors and scientists, in collaboration with NIDDK, will begin laying out a research agenda for a field she said is still in its infancy.

“We don’t have a preconceived, fixed direction as to where we’re going,” she said. “This is being defined as we go along, as we are open to what the investigators are going to reveal.”

NIH Publication No. 06–5743
October 2005