Parental Preferences for Vesicoureteral Reflux Treatment: a Crowd-sourced, Best-worst Scaling Study.

Dr. Gonzalez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences. He is an expert in the design of stated-preference survey instruments and the use of advanced statistical tools to analyze stated-preference data. His research has focused on the transparency in benefit-risk evaluations of medical interventions, and the elicitation of health preferences from multiple stakeholders to support shared decision making.

Dr. Gonzalez co-led the first FDA-sponsored preference study which was highlighted in FDA’s recent precedent-setting guidance for submitting patient-preference evidence to inform regulatory benefit-risk evaluations of new medical devices. More recently, Dr. Gonzalez collaborated with the Medical Devices Innovation Consortium (MDIC) to prepare the first catalog of preference-elicitation methods (part of the Patient-Centered Benefit-Risk Assessment Framework) suitable for benefit-risk assessments of medical devices. As a core group member of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Conjoint Analysis Task Force, Dr. Gonzalez helped draft good-practice recommendations for statistical analysis, interpretation, and reporting of health preference data. Currently, he is working with the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at FDA to support the Center’s capabilities for the review of stated-preference data in regulatory decisions.

I am a pediatric urologist and health services researcher who is interested in caring for children with urological problems, conducting research on how to improve that care, and mentoring young researchers to ensure that the next generation does both better than I currently can. 

My clinical interests include minimally-invasive surgery, neurogenic and non-neurogenic voiding dysfunction, complex urologic reconstruction (particularly in children with spina bifida), and pediatric urologic oncology (particularly Wilms tumor and rhabdomyosarcoma). My research has been funded by awards from the NIH, CDC, FDA, and multiple foundations and industry partners, and during my time on faculty at Duke I have had the pleasure of collaborating with many groups and individuals around the world on a number of projects. Over the past 15 years, I have formally mentored nearly 3 dozen undergraduates, medical students, urology residents, post-doctoral students, and junior faculty members across multiple disciplines (pediatrics, urogynecology, urology, and nursing).