2025
Year in Review
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Advocacy
Met with roughly 80 Congressional offices on AUA priorities such as urologic research funding, Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, urologic workforce, and others.
Through October 31, raised $131,000 in AUAPAC donations, up nearly 65% from the same time the previous year.
Held the 8th Annual Urology Advocacy Summit in Washington, DC, with more than 300 attendees and 220 Capitol Hill visits.
Convened a panel of experts, including leaders from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP), patients, and urologists to discuss diversity in research and barriers to patient engagement in clinical trials.
Hosted an Insurance Roundtable bringing together physicians, industry representatives, private payors, and Medicare Administrative Contractors to understand the policy review and determination process for urologic procedures.
Submitted comment letters to Congress on behalf of urologic researchers and patients in support of urologic research funding under the NIH and CDMRP.
Helped urologists deliver 26 oral and/or written testimonies before their state government bodies through the AUA State Advocacy “Grasstops” Program.
Surveyed AUA domestic members on 2026-2027 state advocacy priorities that are used to determine key advocacy initiatives for work with state legislatures.
Education
Education and International Programs
121
Office of Education committee members
133
accredited educational activities
69,890
individual learner CME credit claims
212,436
hours of CME claimed
72
international leadership meetings
50
international educational activities including those in Spanish and Portuguese
20
academic exchange and visiting scholars (6 from USA, 14 international)
8
international resident scholars (from Brazil, India, Japan)
19
countries represented in the AUA Resident Bowl Competition (Note: includes USA, Canada & Mexico)
17
international society affiliate meetings at AUA2025
1,234,860
questions answered in SASP app
239,034
page views of AUA Urology Core Curriculum
2,296
participants in the 2025 In-Service and OKAT exams
9,134
downloads of the Update Series AudioBook
152,707
AUAUniversity podcast plays
706,223
total video plays on AUAUniversity YouTube channel
Annual Meeting
The AUA welcomed over 15,000 attendees to Las Vegas representing over 100 countries around the globe!
Record-breaking abstract submissions were received for AUA2025!
2,760
Abstracts Presented
180
Plenary Speakers
200
Instructional Course Faculty
363
Abstract Session Moderators
AUA2025 featured an array of innovative sessions, including:
Innovation Nexus was created to bridge a critical gap in the innovation pipeline — empowering urologists, startups, strategics, investors, and industry leaders to collaborate, learn, and bring transformative ideas to life. In 2025, Innovation Nexus engaged hundreds across the urologic community to ignite discovery and accelerate innovation in urology.
Innovation Nexus Forum
The Innovation Nexus Forum at the 2025 Annual Meeting welcomed more than 350 attendees for a day devoted to the latest innovations in urology. The event featured over a dozen unique Showcase presentations from the most innovative startups in urology, reverse pitches from established industry insiders, panel discussions on the hottest topics in innovation, and networking opportunities with some of the key players in urologic innovation.
Innovation Nexus Bootcamp
In September, the AUA welcomed nearly 100 attendees to the Innovation Nexus Bootcamp at AUA. This unique event brought together startups, mentors, investors, and strategics for a high-impact, two-day experience that offered opportunities for mentorship and networking. The event provided attendees with tools, connections, and insights to take their innovation to the next level and accelerate their journeys from concept to market.
Since 2023 Innovation Nexus Showcase presenters have generated $51.1 million in funding!
Explore the many ways Innovation Nexus is expanding in 2026 to ignite discoveries and innovation in urology!
Research
Office of Research by the Numbers
47
researchers supported
24
continuing grantees and 23 new investigators
$1.02M
in grant funding paid to awardees
8
new women awardees
6
new underrepresented in medicine awardees
21
2025 Early-Career Investigator Workshop participants
Data
AUA Annual Census
Explore the Census Reports
AUA Statistical Services
Data Research Program
  • The AUA Data Research Program (DRP) awarded six recipients in 2025. Three projects are using data from the AUA Census, and three projects are using data from the AQUA Registry. Learn more about the winning projects and award recipients.
  • For the 2026 DRP award cycle, 40 letters of intent were received with 16 invited to submit a full application. Up to six projects will be selected for awards.
  • Information on the 2027 competition will be available in March 2026. Participants will receive AUA data access, full statistical analysis support for their research project, and a $2,000 stipend for dissemination costs. Learn more about the program.
AQUA
  • The AUA Quality Registry (AQUA) was approved by CMS as a Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR) for the 2025 MIPS reporting year.
  • AQUA now includes 54 physician performance measures, including 16 measures that are urology-relevant.
  • The AQUA Registry includes more than 13 million unique patients with various urologic conditions.
  • Verana Health, the new data ingestion vendor for the AQUA Registry, has been able to collect EHR data and provide a dashboard for over 95% of the participating practices. A Manual Data Entry Portal has also been developed by Verana Health for participants with incompatible EHRs.
Leadership & Business
The AUA Institute for Leadership & Business (ILB) is an initiative dedicated to providing education, training, and resources to support leadership development and business acumen within the urology community. The Institute includes a number of programs and activities that offer valuable business and leadership training for our members. This year’s highlights include:
Leadership Development
The AUA is committed to the leadership development of its members at all stages of their careers. In 2025, the AUA launched its first Masterclass in Executive Leadership, an immersive weekend program designed for mid-career professionals looking to strengthen and grow their executive leadership skills. Led by course co-directors, Dr. Stephen Nakada and Dr. Jay Raman, the masterclass hosted 25 urologists from 18 states across the U.S. From dynamic presentations led by expert faculty to hands-on leadership simulations, the program left participants inspired and better equipped to lead in their current roles.
2025 also marked the second Global Residents Leadership Retreat, hosted at the 2025 AUA Annual Meeting in Las Vegas. This unique experience brought together 40 urology residents from across the globe for a one-day program dedicated to leadership training and development. Trainees enjoyed valuable opportunities to network and advance their leadership and communication skills through a mix of didactic sessions and small group breakouts, as well as debrief discussions. The program concluded with a Lessons in Leadership panel featuring global leaders in urology.
Leadership Program
The AUA Leadership Program is the AUA’s most longstanding and venerated leadership development initiative, and in 2025 the AUA launched its 11th Leadership Class. The year-long program is designed to nurture future leaders in urology with activities that include an immersive training weekend, capstone group projects, participation in the AUA Summit, and more. We congratulate this year’s cohort and thank our distinguished group of mentors for their contributions to this extraordinary program.
Leadership and Business Education
The AUA’s leadership and business educational offerings cover the topics most relevant to urologists and urology practice professionals. In 2025, the AUA Leadership & Business Podcast featured bi-monthly interviews for a total of 25 episodes on a stimulating array of topics including exploring the medical practice models, the critical role of coding and billing, business leadership softer side skills, AI in urology, and building your network of influence beyond urology. The podcast saw more than 10,000 downloads in 2025, up 25% from 2024, underscoring our members’ interest in the topics of leadership and business. Additionally, the AUA Leadership & Business podcast was awarded the distinguished Gold Circle Award by the American Society of Association Executives.
Practice Management and Coding
The AUA recognizes and supports the critical value of the practice team. In 2025, the AUA continued its coding education with AUA CodingPlus, a quarterly virtual education series that tackles the latest coding issues impacting urology. The AUA also hosted a full-day Coding Seminar, an event that covered essential urologic coding and documentation updates, Medicare updates, and the impact of accurate coding on revenue cycle management and is available on-demand on AUAUniversity. In addition, AUA conducted a needs assessment to assess current practice patterns around the use of miscellaneous J codes in a variety of practice settings. Almost 200 urology professionals participated in either a survey, focus group, or practice interview to contribute to this important research, the results of which will be shared with the AUA community by early 2026.
Membership
The AUA proudly served more than 25,000 members representing over 130 countries around the globe in 2025! We welcomed over 4,000 new members in the past year.
Our members are at the core of all we do!
The volunteer efforts of members are critical to advancing the AUA’s mission and the work we do.
In 2025, over 600 members served in 1,000+ positions across 50+ Councils, Committees, Editorial Boards, and Guidelines Panels. Thank you for your dedication to advancing urology through your service.
2025 Urology Residency Match
148
registered and accredited training programs
529
match participants
403
positions filled
76%
overall match rate
78%
match rate for female applicants
75%
match rate for male applicants
Guidelines
History Exhibit
The AUA W.P. Didusch Center 2025 History exhibit, See, Do, Teach: Developing Urologists, curated by Dr. Robert Flanigan, provided a fascinating look at the history of education in urology and the milestones that transformed education within our specialty—from ancient Greece and the Dark Ages to AUAUniversity and Artificial Intelligence.
The AUA Forum on the History of Urology included 12 Posters/20 Podium Presentations and hosted 164 attendees. Highlights included:
2025 AUA Earl Nation Retrospectroscope Award
The AUA History Committee awarded the 2025 AUA Earl Nation Retrospectroscope Award to Aurora Grutman, medical student at Johns Hopkins, for her paper, Charles Huggins’ Road Not Taken at the Brady Urological Institute. She will receive a refurbished vintage Brown-Buerger cystoscope and a check for $1,000 from the AUA at the 2026 Annual Meeting History Forum. Honorable Mention was awarded to Evan Gudell at University of Rochester School of Medicine for his paper, Urology’s 20th Century Battle: Securing its Place in the Clinic and the Curriculum.
Annual Meeting Outreach
Of 19 reels posted during AUA2025, the History Booth reel had the second-highest views: 10,284, 202 likes, 5 shares, 6 bookmarks
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One post promoting the booth posted on AUA social media during the meeting got 11,262 impressions and 99 engagements
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Publications
AUA’s Publications had another strong year in 2025, and our publishing portfolio, which includes The Journal of Urology® (JU), Urology Practice® (UPJ), JU Open Plus (JUOP), and AUANews, continues to serve the urologic community as the definitive and collective voice of urology.
In 2025, The Journal of Urology® continued to lead urology in overall citations and social media followers, and the publication’s Journal Impact Factor remained strong, climbing to 7.5 from the previous year’s 6.4. The Pathway to Publication program, which identified top-rated AUA2025 abstracts and invited authors to pursue possible publication, continued to be well received. The program has been a tremendous success and will continue in 2026.
Urology Practice® continues to see a growth in submissions since it was indexed in 2023. Total citations to the journals have increased by 70%, and its Impact Factor more than doubled to 1.7. Two thousand twenty-five also marks the final year for the Editor, Dr. J. Stephen Jones, who has successfully guided the journal through indexing and a remarkable growth stage in quality and impact. Dr. Kathleen Kobashi, the incoming editor, will have the exciting opportunity to build off Dr. Jones’ legacy and lay a foundation of her own.
JU Open Plus had a wonderful third year of publication in 2025. JUOP is an online-only, continuously published open access journal. The publication continues to see year over year growth, benefitting from cascaded transfer submissions from JU and UPJ and original submissions from all over the world. Since its inception in 2022, JUOP has published over 400 articles.
AUANews implemented a new editorial strategy to better serve the needs of AUA members in 2025. This strategy, based on a user survey in 2024, gives more focus to insightful and useful clinical content augmented by stories of how AUA supports members and the greater urology community. With enhanced multimedia content, including more AUANewsWorthy Webinars than ever and expanded digital content, AUANews.net is urology’s #2 most visited site. We continue to stay focused on improving this publication, so look for some exciting content upgrades in 2026 with even more streamlined, quality clinical and guidelines content.
Quality
This year, AUA’s Board of Directors established implementation of our National Quality Agenda and Strategies for Urologic Practice [“Quality Agenda”] as a strategic goal for the organization. The Quality Agenda articulates six priorities and four strategies to guide Quality activities for the next decade. This new Quality Agenda was introduced to AUA members via an AUANews article and an AUANews Inside Tract podcast episode featuring AUA’s Secretary and Science & Quality Council Chair. In addition, AUA partnered with the American Board of Urology to facilitate potential receipt of QI Attestation credit for the Continuing Urologic Certification (CUC) program for those who actively engage with the AQUA Registry.
Improving Patient Safety
Published the Quality Improvement (QI) Project Guide on AUA’s website and released four accompanying AUANews Inside Tract podcast episodes. The Project Guide, which serves as a step-by-step guide to support successful quality or process improvement projects, has garnered nearly 1,800 page views to-date.
Enhancing Diagnostic Excellence
Developed resources based on the 2024 QI Summit that focused on advancing diagnostic excellence in Prostate Cancer by improving prostate MR image quality. The resources included a meeting summary, toolkit, and a podcast episode. The landing page for this project received more than 600 page views to-date.
Promoting Value in Urologic Care
Promoting Joy in Work
Launched a new podcast series, QIPS Insights. In this series, members of AUA’s Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (QIPS) Committee interview a variety of QI project leaders about their projects’ origin, successes, and lessons learned.
The Urology Care Foundation is the official foundation of the American Urological Association and is powered by the trusted experts and members of the AUA. UCF’s goal is to be the leader in improving health care for urologic patients worldwide by supporting research, providing clinical and patient education, and advancing humanitarian initiatives. This year was filled with accomplishments to help us fulfill that goal.
Research
Our investigator award programs are essential to the development of young urology researchers and provide critical support to develop the field’s future research leaders (to date we have funded over 950 young scientists). This year, the Foundation:
  • Celebrated the 50th anniversary of research funding by announcing the creation of the Transformative Research Award. The award aims to nurture creative, interdisciplinary, outside-the-box research ideas that challenge the status quo to further the state of urologic care with real-world impact.
  • Provided approximately $1 million in new, critically needed research funding to 23 new investigators at 22 major academic centers across North America.
  • Developed and competed the first Urology Care Foundation Bridge Award supported by Dornier MedTech, marking the first time that the AUA has financially supported independent urology researchers.
  • Funded one new Sumitomo LEAD Program award to Gabriel Martin, MD, at Loma Linda University.
  • Funded one Boston Scientific Medical Student Innovation Award supporting an innovative medical student in a 12-month research project to Helen Gao at UC Irvine.
  • Honored six outstanding researchers in their life-long commitment to urology research with the annual Research Awards of Distinction.
Clinical Education
Developed 12 new endowment opportunities, each with matching funds, to provide ongoing clinical lectures and education to current and future urologists to advance the knowledge and care they provide to patients.
Patient Education
The Foundation continues to grow as the single largest repository in the world for urologic patient education aligned with current AUA clinical guidelines. This year, the Foundation:
  • Reached millions around the globe with urologic disease awareness and education to help patients and their loved ones navigate their urologic health and care.
  • Welcomed more than 8 million page views to our website, Urologyhealth.org, providing access to more than 800 pieces of physician-led patient education for patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers.
Humanitarian Support
The Foundation recognizes and supports the work of urologists who are making outstanding contributions to improve urologic health in underserved areas both within and outside the U.S. This year, the Foundation:
  • Awarded the Humanitarian Recognition Award to Mahesh Desai, MD, for decades of service to patients in underserved areas in India and making an indelible impact on sustainable clinical care.
  • Awarded 14 Humanitarian grants to individuals providing direct urologic patient care to underserved communities both inside the United States and internationally.
  • Funded the second Health Equity Fellowship designed to train early career urologists passionate about humanitarian work within the United States so they may be effective in engaging with diverse communities, especially those most marginalized.
  • Launched the Humanitarian Quality Improvement Program (HQIRP) with 7 sites around the world. The purpose of HQIRP is to support these sites over a three-year period while they identify issues, develop an improvement plan, and implement that plan to improve the lives of patients.
2026 Sneak Peek
We have another extraordinary year planned for 2026, filled with more education, support, resources, and innovation to advance urology and serve our members—and their patients—around the world. Here’s a look ahead at what is planned for 2026:
  • We’re on a journey to enhance your digital experience! In 2026, we will continue to make improvements to our digital ecosystem to better serve our members and position us for a modern, digital-first future! In January 2026, you will find a new AUAUniversity with new features to enhance your learning experience, and later in the year, The Journal of Urology® and Urology Practice® will transition to a new platform with new features and functions. Learn more about our digital transformation and more changes on the horizon.
  • In November 2026, the AUA will host its first Science & Quality Summit. This two day event will build on the National Quality Agenda and Strategies for Urologic Practice released in 2024, and explore how the work we do can move the needle on quality patient care. The Summit will mirror the Advocacy Summit held in the Spring and programming will cover the broader work of the Science and Quality Division, including topics related to Guidelines, Quality Implementation and the use of AQUA and Census data to support research.
  • And much more!
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