Kristina Penniston, MD, PhD, RD

Kristina Penniston is a scientist in the Department of Urology at the UW-Madison and also a registered dietitian nutritionist at the University Hospital and Clinics (part of UW Health). Dr. Penniston earned a PhD in nutritional science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She completed a dietetic residency at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics and is a fellow of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Dr. Penniston has provided clinical nutrition services to patients with kidney stones and other urologic diseases for >20 years. Her work focuses on prevention of kidney stones. She is specifically interested in developing and testing dietary interventions that prevent recurrent stones; promoting patients' self-efficacy in managing their stone disease; and understanding and improving patients' health-related quality of life. She was the primary developer of the Wisconsin Stone Quality of Life questionnaire (WISQOL), a stone-specific instrument to assess patients' health-related quality of life. Dr. Penniston leads the North American Stone Quality of Life consortium, a clinical research collaboration comprised of 17 urology centers in the US and Canada, the primary aims of which are to test and validate the WISQOL and understand how kidney stones affects patients' health-related quality of life. Dr. Penniston is a member of the American Urological Association (AUA) and is a former AUA researcher scholar (2008-2010). She currently serves as Secretary-Treasurer for the Research on Calculus Kinetics (ROCK) Society.