The baseline (year 1) visit of the Health, Aging and Body Composition cohort study
occurred between 1997 and 1998 and included 1584 black and white women aged 70–79
residing in specified zip code areas surrounding Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Memphis,
Tennessee.13 Sample participants were included at baseline only if they initially reported no
difficulty walking at least 1/4 mile or up a flight of stairs.13 For the baseline study sample,
we excluded those women without medication or urinary incontinence information (n=12),
and those that reported any urinary problems (n=329) leaving a total of 1243 women. By
year 4, 103 women were lost to followup (56 women died, 5 withdrew and 42 could not be
contacted or 8.3%) and 181 did not have either incontinence or medication information
collected. This left us with a study sample of. 959. We compared the demographics for those
who were lost to followup versus those available at the 4 year followup and found no
statistically significant differences (all comparisons P>0.05). This study was approved by
the University of Pittsburgh and University of Tennessee Memphis Institutional Review
Boards and written informed consent was obtained from each participant prior to data
collection.