Dr. Scales provides strategic vision and oversight of the Clinical Research Units and clinical research initiatives including early phase clinical initiatives within the School of Medicine. He is responsible for developing broad-based research plans, clinical research recruitment and enrollment, as well as overseeing the integration of research and health data with technology for clinical research.
Dr. Scales is a urologic surgeon and a clinical/health services researcher with a strong research portfolio begun during his tenure as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Fellow. His work crosses multiple disciplines, including emergency medicine, infectious diseases, nephrology, and geriatrics. He is nationally recognized for epidemiology and health services research, much of which has implications for translating advances to populations. He is Principal Investigator for the multicenter Prevention of Urinary Stones with Hydration (PUSH) study, which is the largest stone prevention trial to date. He has led a national program to build clinical research capacity in urology and co-leads a data initiative to provide insights into health equity and quality of care for urologic conditions across the United States.
A member of the School of Medicine faculty since 2013, Dr. Scales leads the annual course on data and health care transformation in the Duke Master of Management in Clinical Informatics program. He also serves as an associate professor of urology, associate professor in population health sciences, is a member of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, and an affiliate faculty member in the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy.