an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). T he worldwide burden of kidney disease is rising, but public awareness remains limited, underscoring the need for effective communication by stakeholders in the kidney health community.1–4 Despite this need for clarity, the nomenclature for describing kidney function and disease lacks uniformity. Two decades ago, a survey of hundreds of published articles and meeting abstracts reported a broad array of overlapping, confusing terms for chronic kidney disease (CKD) and advocated adoption of unambiguous terminology.5 Nevertheless, terms flagged by that analysis as problematic, such as “chronic renal failure” and “pre-dialysis,” still appear in current-day publications. A coherent, shared nomenclature could influence communication at all levels, including not only greater appreciation of the burden of disease, but also improved understanding about how patients feel about their disease, more effective communication between kidney disease specialists and other clinicians, more straightforward comparison and integration of datasets, better recognition of gaps in knowledge for future research, and more comprehensive public health policies for acute and chronic kidney disease. The international organization Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) has developed guidelines promulgating definitions and classifications for acute kidney injury (AKI), acute kidney diseases and disorders (AKD), and CKD, and guidelines for their evaluation and management.6,7 Developing consistent, patient-centered, and precise descriptions of kidney function and disease in the scientific literature is an important objective that KDIGO is now pursuing to align communication in clinical practice, research, and public health. Although some terms have been in use for decades, the increased exchange of information among stakeholders makes it timely to revisit nomenclature in order to ensure consistency. The goal is to facilitate communication within and across disciplines and between practitioner and patient communities, to ultimately improve outcomes through clarity and precision. In June 2019, KDIGO convened a Consensus Conference with the goal of standardizing and refining the nomenclature used in English-language scientific articles to describe kidney function and disease, and developing a glossary that could be used by journals. Prior to the conference, KDIGO posted an announcement of the conference on its website, including the Scope of Work and requested public comment.8 Attendees at the conference included editors of kidney subspecialty journals, kidney subspecialty editors at general medical journals and journals from other subspecialties, experienced authors of clinical kidney health research, and patients. Guiding principles of the conference were that the revised nomenclature should be patient-centered, precise, and consistent with nomenclature used in the KDIGO guidelines (Table 1). The discussion focused on general description of acute and chronic kidney disease and kidney measures, rather than specific kidney diseases and particular measures of function and structure. The Scope of Work developed prior to the conference contained a series of proposals for consideration (Supplementary Box S1). Classifications of causes of kidney disease and procedures, performance measures, and outcome metrics for dialysis and transplantation were considered beyond the planned scope of discussion. Prior KDIGO conferences have been evidence based, but little is known about the impact of terms commonly used to describe kidney function and disease on people who have kidney disease. Thus, KDIGO commissioned a series of patient and caregiver focus groups on the topic prior to the conference of which the results are summarized here, and the details are reported separately.9 Also, KDIGO commissioned a KDIGO conference report AS Levey et al.: KDIGO nomenclature for kidney function and disease 1118 Kidney International (2020) 97, 1117–1129 survey of attendees prior to the conference, of which and their replies are summarized here. Nomenclature for kidney function and disease Nomenclature is defined as “systematically formulated names for specific entities” and in the biomedical sciences has required the ongoing work of international groups.10 The development of nomenclature requires the convergence of multiple names into an accepted set of terms, meaning some users must be willing to relinquish traditional words that may be more familiar or memorable. Nomenclature must be consistent with current knowledge and stable enough to remain relevant for the foreseeable future, but sufficiently flexible to accommodate new vocabulary arising with advances in the field.10 The KDIGO guidelines define kidney disease as structural or functional abnormalities of the kidneys that have implications for health, and classify kidney disease according to duration, cause, severity of structural and functional abnormalities, and prognosis (Figure 1).11,12 A few other publications have proposed kidney-related nomenclature,13–16 but these have been focused on specific diseases or treatments. Other standardization efforts have had a physiologic or ontologic focus.17,18 The American Medical