October 23, 2009 (CHARLESTON, SC)—An educational forum for women designed to educate about urinary incontinence and pelvic support was held Saturday, October 3, 2009 at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco, CA. Over a hundred women were in attendance. The forum represents the fifth such event taking place in the U.S. over the decade.

The National Association For Continence (NAFC) in collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) presented “A Women’s Forum: Lifelong Bladder Health and Pelvic Support,” which featured experts who are clinicians from diverse professional backgrounds. The speakers are from top institutions and organizations including Kaiser Permanente, University of California San Francisco, Stanford University and San Francisco General Hospital. Their multidisciplinary training spanned through obstetrics, gynecology, geriatrics, urology, and colon and rectal surgery. Functions of the bladder, role of pelvic support, types of incontinence, symptoms and treatments, bowel health, nocturia, and surgical and non-surgical treatment were all topics of discussion.

“The purpose of this forum was to help women feel connected to many other individuals who have similar symptoms. We want to give them a sense of hope from all that the medical community and industry innovators have to offer,” stated Donna Deng, MD, assistant professor in the UCSF Department of Urology, who helped NAFC organize the forum speakers.

Forum sponsors included Allergan Inc., Astellas Pharma US Inc., C.R. Bard Inc., Ethicon Women’s Health and Urology, HDIS Inc., Medtronic Inc., Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Novasys Medical Corporation, Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals and Rochester Medical Corporation.

Content from the session was recorded and will be broadcast from www.nafc.org in the months ahead in a series of webinars. In addition, abstracts from the presenters will be published in NAFC’s winter issue of its quarterly newsletter, Quality Care, to be mailed later this year and archived on NAFC’s Web site for visitors. Translations in Spanish will also be provided from the Web site.

About the University of California, San Francisco

University of California, San Francisco is a leading university dedicated to defining health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. The mission of the USCF Department of Urology is to provide compassionate, cost-effective, skillful and innovative care to all patients; to ask relevant questions and answer them with scientific knowledge obtained through laboratory and clinical research; to educate students residents and fellows in the art and science of urology and thereby to train the future leaders in our field; and to recognize that the Department of Urology is a group of individuals working together, responsibly and ethically, to achieve its goals. For more information, visit http://urology.ucsf.edu.