SMDM Homepage | 41st Annual Meeting Homepage | Job Postings

‌ ‌

FROM THE EDITOR

Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD Editor-in-Chief Ellen G. Engelhardt, PhD Deputy Editor

by Brian Zikmund-Fisher , PhD; University of Michigan Winter is here (at least for those of us in the Northern hemisphere)! That means we’re recovering from the SMDM North American meeting, debating whether the snow / rain (or lack thereof) has any meaning regarding climate change, and trying to adjust our bodies to the lack of daylight. It also means that there is a lot going on in the SMDM community! The current issue of the SMDM Newsletter includes a variety of interesting commentaries: My discussion of the results of the Fall poll of over 100 SMDM members on open access publishing. The results suggest lots of interest, but some concerns. Take a look! Randall Grout makes a strong appeal for building connections between SMDM and clinical informaticians. Victoria Shaffer discusses the many psychological insights relevant to understanding patterns of overutilization in healthcare. Mark Liebow provides his regular update on news you can use in the health policy space. I also want to call your attention to a few other features in this issue: President Heather Taffet Gold’s letter describes the three (!) Special Committees currently working on pressing issues in SMDM. The recap of the North American Meeting in Montreal. You can now take a look at the video recordings from select sessions as well as review the Wakelet recap of Twitter posts. It’s hiring season, and there are a number of job and fellowship postings listed in this issue. Speaking of hiring, some of you may be interested in the call for applications to become the next Editor-in-Chief of SMDM Journals starting in 2021. We also have the annual call for SMDM Officer, Trustee, and Awards Nominations. Looking forward, the Winter Scientific Issues in MDM Poll shifts from talking about open access to exploring issues of scientific replicability and open science. Both the fields of medicine and psychology have become increasingly concerned recently regarding failures to replicate findings, and there are increasing calls for greater transparency in research (e.g., data sharing). As a society whose members are particularly interested in supporting rigorous research methods, I thought it would be interesting to see what SMDM members think about these issues. Please click the link below and share your thoughts! Take the Winter 2019 Poll Lastly, a callout to my Deputy Editor Ellen Engelhardt and to the omnipresent Trevor Scholl , without whom this Newsletter would simply not happen. Enjoy! Brian

FROM THE PRESIDENT

Heather Taffet Gold, PhD Happy New Year to You and Yours! by Heather Taffet Gold, PhD ; New York University School of Medicine We hope you are still feeling inspired by the 2018 North American meeting in Montreal. It was full of terrific science and learning, important and varying perspectives, and valuable networking and socializing. Thank you to our meeting co-chairs, Holly Witteman , William Dale , Isabel Jordan , and Beverly Canin , who put in hours of effort to ensure the meeting’s success. We are kicking off the New Year building on our strategic plan goals and diving into some research and policy-making endeavors to strengthen SMDM. Our strategic plan has three objectives: 1) support increased international growth and influence, 2) increase our engagement with both clinical and health decision-making organizations, and 3) develop and promote SMDM’s expertise in patient and public engagement. Given these objectives and thoughtful feedback from our members over the years, it appears to be the Year of the Special Committee. Within SMDM, Special Committees are like task forces, time-limited working groups that develop recommendations for the Board to consider. We have three this year. One Special Committee is focused on whether and how to offer childcare services at SMDM meetings. This will be a fact-finding mission led by Past President Angie Fagerlin to better understand the social, financial, and legal ramifications of SMDM offering such services. We know how important it is to support traveling parents in their scientific pursuits especially early in their careers. We also aim to promote inclusion and diversity at our meetings while recognizing legitimate trade-offs for an organization of our size. The findings of this special committee will be invaluable for informing our potential next steps in this area. See this informative article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5866621/ A second Special Committee on conduct and inclusion has begun its work under the leadership of Trustee Beate Jahn and former Trustee Brian Zikmund-Fisher . Its goal is to recommend SMDM program and policy changes to further an environment that embraces inclusion of all people and that fosters a collegial and respectful atmosphere and intellectual, thoughtful engagement in all SMDM business and meetings. Many professional organizations have codes of conduct, and meaningful policies and guidelines for improving our inclusiveness will promote an even more positive atmosphere. The Special Committee has created a brief survey for SMDM members to help the committee determine the scope of its work. Please use the link below to complete the survey. We hope to identify both positive things at SMDM that need to be continued and concerning issues that need to be addressed. All feedback will be anonymous . Take the Conduct and Inclusion Survey The third Special Committee is focused on further developing patient and stakeholder engagement. As an organization, we need to continue to define how we want to engage partners who do not typically attend our meetings and to define what successful engagement will look like. This will include strengthening SMDM’s bridges across fields of shared decision-making, modeling, cost-effectiveness analysis, preference valuation, evidence synthesis, and more, while creating opportunities for others to partner with us. We need to figure out our short- and long-term goals and answer the questions: how do we want patients and stakeholders working with us, and how do they prefer to work with us, and why? Defining the value and goals of these relationships will strengthen SMDM and hopefully our partners, too. This committee is co-chaired by Vice President-Elect Mary Politi and President-Elect Lisa Prosser . As you can see, SMDM is both responding to and taking proactive moves to ensure our relevance and enhance our scientific strengths, while becoming even more welcoming and hospitable. In that vein, if you are looking to become more involved, we invite you to contact us ( info@smdm.org ) with questions, suggestions, or concerns. Also check out our   homepage   to find your favorite committee or interest group to join. With best wishes for a productive and gratifying year, Heather Taffet Gold , PhD President, SMDM

COMMENTARY

The opinions stated in the following commentaries are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD Editor-in-Chief Member Thoughts on Open Access Publishing: Results of the Fall 2018 Scientific Issues in MDM Poll by Brian Zikmund-Fisher , PhD; SMDM e-newsletter Editor-in-Chief The Scientific Issues in SMDM Poll for Fall 2018 focused on SMDM member perceptions of open access (OA) publishing. We received 107 responses (an all time high for the poll - thank you!!). I was also pleased to see responses from SMDM members with a broad range of interests. Based on SMDM’s 5 main topical categories, 27% of responses came from members focusing on decision psychology, 26% in applied health economics, 25% in health services / outcomes / policy research, 16% in quantitative methods, and 6% in patient and stakeholder preferences and engagement. The results are summarized below. As Table 1 shows, about 2/3 of respondents have both published previously in open access journals and prefer to publish in journals that either require or allow open access. Of interest, however, was the fact that 2/3 of respondents also expressed concerns about article quality in open access journals.  Interest in open access publishing appears to be growing among SMDM members. When asked to estimate what proportion of their future articles they expected to be published as open access, the mean response was 50 percent (range: 0-100%). While I did not calculate the exact median, the distribution appeared balanced with many responses in the 70-80% range and many in the 20-30% range. When asked about what keeps them from publishing more open access articles (Table 2), financial considerations were most often cited as a key barrier. However, the second most common response was that preferred or target journals were not open access.  So, takeaways: I read these data as suggesting pretty strong interest in open access publishing, with money and prestige / impact being the two factors that inhibit broader use of open access publishing options. I was intrigued to see that almost half of members have voluntarily converted an article into open access by paying a publication fee. I wonder whether that number will grow over time, especially as high quality journals (such as our own Medical Decision Making ) increasingly adopt open access as an option for authors.

Randall Grout, MD, MS From Theory to Application: Medical Decision Making and Informatics by Randall Grout , MD, MS; Chair, SMDM Medical Informatics Group I thoroughly enjoy browsing through the rows of posters at scientific meetings, stopping for chats with the presenters to clarify topics, and swapping ideas for next steps. (A shout-out is due to SMDM for including hors d'oeuvres during poster sessions!) Over a few weeks this past fall, I participated in two professional society conferences that highlighted a particular need in our line of work: a translational pipeline from theory to application in medical decision making. The first conference was our beloved SMDM Annual North American Meeting in Montreal. Our society excels in developing rigorous, systematic approaches to clinical decision making. But amid the theoretical and in silico work, I felt an absence of outcomes data representing real-world applications in clinical decision support. Fast forward three weeks, and I was in San Francisco at the American Medical Informatics Association Annual Symposium. One of the core domains represented there is clinical informatics, which focuses on improving healthcare by “analyzing, designing, implementing, and evaluating information and communication systems.” 1 In fact, central to the clinical informatics subspecialty content is clinical decision making. Again, I perused the posters, but this time noticed the lack of methodologic rigor and theoretical foundations in the decision support applications. The SMDM Medical Informatics Interest Group discussed this gap at our recent gathering. Wouldn’t it be great to pair the methodologic rigor and expertise so typical of SMDM with the practical wisdom and applications of clinical informaticians? Wouldn't this be a way to translate our evidence-based research in medical decision making? Indeed, this may be a potent opportunity for our society’s strategic plan in building capacity and enhancing partnerships in order to be a “trusted resource for other clinical and policy-oriented societies.” 2 While such societal level alignments and ambassadorships may take some time, I encourage you to reach out to your local clinical informaticians. You can start by contacting the health system chief medical information officer. Describe your ideas for clinical decision making and discuss how to turn those plans into a reality. Then test it and share your findings at our future SMDM meetings and journal issues. I look forward to stopping by your poster or presentation in a year or two! Sources: 1. Gardner RM, Overhage JM, Steen EB, Munger BS, Holmes JH, Williamson JJ, et al. Core Content for the Subspecialty of Clinical Informatics. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2009;16(2):153–7. 2. Society for Medical Decision Making. SMDM Strategic Plan 2015 – 2020 [Internet]. [cited 2018 Dec 13]. Available from: https://smdm.org/uploads/general_files/SMDM_Strategic_Plan_2015-2020.pdf

Victoria Shaffer, PhD Psychological Insights on Overutilization in Health Care by Victoria Shaffer , PhD; University of Missouri One of my favorite aspects of SMDM is the interdisciplinary nature of the research that the society produces. I see incredible collaborations between social scientists and medical professionals that have produced behaviorally-focused interventions and developed evidence-based health policies.   In a recent article in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences , SMDM member Laura Scherer and I had the opportunity to think specifically about what psychology could contribute to the conversation on overutilization, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment in health care. While informational interventions designed to address these issues have had a significant, but modest, impact on the rate of overutilization, they have not been enough to solve the problem.   To effectively address overutilization, we argued that there is a great need to understand the psychological underpinnings of overuse in medicine. Reviewing the literature on cognitive biases and schemas, affective information, and individual differences we identified several psychological mechanisms that contribute to a patient’s desire for more medical intervention.   For example, the use of diagnostic labels (e.g. DCIS vs. Stage 0 breast cancer) evokes schemas that may create patient expectation or demand for tests and treatments. Labels, like cancer, can activate broad schemas about severity, prognosis, and appropriate treatments, priming participants for active interventions, such as surgery. Additionally, affective information, or how people feel about a screening test and how people feel about cancer, significantly predicts willingness to be screened—above and beyond perceptions of the test’s benefits and harms.   However, the relationships among affect, emotion, and medical decision making are complex and fairly nuanced. Negative emotions, such as anxiety or stress, do not always create a desire for more medical tests and treatments. Negative affect can motivate positive health behaviors in some contexts and maladaptive behaviors in other contexts. Positive affect can also have a negative impact on medical decision making, particularly when positive emotions result in unrealistic expectations about cancer risk or treatment outcomes. In light of this, it is not surprising that educational tools targeting patients and national guidelines targeting practitioners have only modestly decreased overutilization.   Psychologists—along with other social scientists, health economists, and policy experts—need to be involved in the development of policies to address overutilization and other complex problems facing our healthcare systems. SMDM has the opportunity to pave the way for this type of interdisciplinary scholarship and lead global efforts to promote shared decision making and effective health communication. To maximize the effectiveness of national and global efforts to address overutilization, interventions and health-related policies must acknowledge that people have biased and stable tendencies toward overuse of medical tests and treatments and simply providing more information will not be enough to solve the problem.

Mark Liebow, MD, MPH What Will Democratic Control of the U.S. House Mean? by Mark Liebow , MD, MPH; Mayo Clinic As this is being written, there is a partial shutdown of the U.S. government that began just before Christmas. However, this does not affect most medical research and clinical functions of the government, including the V.A., because they have appropriations through September 30 from a bill Congress passed last summer.   November’s elections led to Democrats picking up 40 seats net in the House of Representatives, thereby taking control for 2019 and 2020. However, Republicans picked up two seats net in the Senate. The House now has 235 Democrats and 199 Republicans with 1 seat vacant. The Senate has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and 2 Independents (who caucus with the Democrats). Having mixed control makes it more likely controversial proposals will not pass in the next two years. However, many observers feel that research funding, which often has bi-partisan support, should continue to be reasonable barring a sharp downturn in the economy. Proposals to repeal or reduce sharply the scope of the Affordable Care Act will not go anywhere. As usual, the appropriations process for Fiscal Year 2020, which begins on October 1, will begin in committees this spring and early summer, with appropriation bills being considered by the full House and Senate in September. The House and Senate bills are likely to differ from each other more than they did when both bodies were controlled by Republicans and the conference committees that combine the two into a single bill could be much more contentious than before.   The new chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee for Health and Human Services funding will be Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut, whose district includes Yale. She is quite liberal and has had many health policy interests. The new chair of the full committee is Nita Lowey from New York. She represents Westchester County and her district includes New York Medical College. She went to Bronx Science High School and has had health policy interests over her career.   The chair for the Senate Appropriations subcommittee for Health and Human Services funding will be Roy Blunt from Missouri. His state has one osteopathic and four allopathic medical schools. The chair of the full committee is Richard Shelby from Alabama, which has one osteopathic and two allopathic medical schools. SMDM members who are represented by one of these Senators or Congresswomen would have greater than average influence in advocating for higher research funding in agencies that often fund MDM projects and should contact them in the winter or spring as appropriation bills are being put together.   In December a Federal District Court judge ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, but that ruling is under appeal and it is widely thought that decision will be overturned. The law stays in place during the appeal process. The Trump administration’s efforts to weaken the law’s effects administratively have had a modest effect, but the 2019 signup for policies on the health insurance exchange dropped only modestly and many of the proposed changes are held up due to litigation.

MEETING NEWS

Save the Date! SMDM 41st Annual Meeting: Portland, OR October 20 - 23, 2019 Join SMDM at the 41st Annual Meeting, which will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Portland, Oregon. The meeting theme is Many Views on Value and the keynote speaker will be Paul Slovic, PhD . The Call for Abstracts and Short Courses will open in March 2019 and more information will be posted to the 41st Annual Meeting homepage in the coming months. We hope to see you there! Meeting co-chairs: Karen Eden , PhD, Carmen Lewis , MD, MPH and Dan Matlock , MD

SMDM 40th Annual Meeting in Review: Montreal, Canada Experts from a variety of fields in medical decision making gathered in Montreal, Canada from October 13 - 17, 2018 for the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) 40th Annual North American Meeting. 525 attendees attended the four-day event, which included a plethora of workshops, symposia, and presentations on medical decision making, with a theme of  Decision Making Across the Lifespan . The meeting was certified as a Patients Included Conference. Patients were involved in the planning of the meeting, served as presenters on symposium panels, and were encouraged to speak from the audience during question and answer sessions. Meeting co-chairs  Holly Witteman, William Dale, Beverly Canin and Isabel Jordan provided a warm welcome to attendees on Monday morning. Elder Joe McGregor , a Kanien’keha:ka elder, opened the meeting with Ohenton Kariwatehkwen, "the words that come before all else." Monica E. Peek , Associate Professor in the Section of General Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago, was this year’s Keynote Speaker. Dr. Peek discussed how structural inequities impact health disparities across the lifespan. Awards were presented to key leaders and mentors in the field of medical decision making:  Murray Krahn  received the SMDM Award for Distinguished Service. Lisa Prosser received the John M. Eisenberg Award for Practical Application of Medical Research. Myriam Hunink received the SMDM Career Achievement Award. SMDM also recognized Allan Detsky for his recent appointment as a Member of the Order of Canada. The Outstanding Paper by a Young Investigator was awarded to Jarrod Dalton . 10 trainees received the Lee B. Lusted Finalists' Student Prize for outstanding presentations of research and 3 trainees received awards for their research in Sex-and Gender-Based Analysis. The Lusted Student Award for Quantitative Methods and Theoretical Developments was renamed this year in honor of a distinguished member of the SMDM community,  Stephen Pauker . Past President  Uwe Siebert  passed the gavel to incoming President  Heather Taffet Gold  at the SMDM Annual Business Meeting to officially start Dr. Gold's term as President. View Video Recordings of Select 2018 Annual Meeting Sessions Ever Wonder What it Would be Like to Attend a SMDM Annual Meeting?   For a first person account, take a look at the attendees' highlights and biggest insights gathered from the Twitter hashtag #SMDM18 on Wakelet. Click the button below to access the Wakelet recap. Wakelet: Montreal In Review

Best Short Course at the 2018 Annual Meeting by Hawre Jalal, PhD, MD and Aaron Scherer , PhD 2018 Annual Meeting Short Course Co-Chairs This year, we offered 18 short courses and had 238 registrants (ranging from 7 to 20 per course) at the 2018 SMDM Annual Meeting in Montreal. The course that received the best rating from its attendees, as judged by the Short Course Co-Chairs, was Hands-on Model Calibration in R . In this intermediate level, half-day course co-lead by Eva Enns , PhD, and Fernando Alarid-Escudero , PhD, participants were introduced to different approaches for estimating uncertain or unknown parameters so that model outputs more closely match existing data. In addition to learning about each approaches’ strengths and weaknesses, participants were able to gain hands-on experience with using each calibration approach in R. Congratulations to Eva and Fernando! We also wanted to provide an honorable mention to Jeff Hoch , PhD, for his short course, Introduction to Cost-Effectiveness Analysis . His course has won the Best Short Course for the last two years and once again received incredibly high ratings, making this year’s choice very difficult. Thank you Jeff, for once again leading such a great course!

SOCIETY NEWS

Beate Jahn, PhD Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD

Your Feedback is Needed on Inclusion in SMDM by Beate Jahn, PhD and Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD; SMDM Special Committee on Conduct and Inclusion Co-Chairs SMDM tries to foster an environment that embraces inclusion of all people, provides a collegial and respectful atmosphere, and supports intellectual, thoughtful engagement. To promote this type of environment and community, SMDM is convening a Special Committee to draft recommendations related to inclusion and conduct in SMDM business and scientific meetings. The Special Committee has created a brief survey for SMDM members to help the committee determine the scope of its work. We hope to identify both positive things at SMDM that need to be continued and concerning things that need to be addressed. All feedback will be anonymous. Thank you for your time and for your feedback. Please feel free to contact us with any questions. Please complete the survey by Friday, January 11, 2019. Take the Conduct and Inclusion Survey

2019 Call for Officer and Trustee Nominations

The Nominations Committee for the Society for Medical Decision Making is soliciting nominations for the following positions: President-Elect Vice President-Elect Historian 3 Trustees (including 1 International Trustee)   The committee invites SMDM members to submit the names of members whom you believe would serve the Society well. Self-nominations are encouraged! The Nominations Committee will consider all submitted names. At least 2 nominees will be selected for each position, with the exception of Historian. Upon approval of the slate by the Board of Trustees, the list of nominees will be sent to all SMDM members. Additional nominees will then be accepted by petition, as described by the Society’s regulations.   The deadline to submit Officer and Trustee Nominations is Friday, February 22, 2019 at 5 PM ET.   2019 Nominations Committee: Uwe Siebert, MD, MPH, MSc, ScD - Chair Angie Fagerlin , PhD Karen Kuntz , ScD Aisha Langford , PhD Holly Witteman , PhD

Submit your Officer and Trustee Nominees

2019 Call for Award Nominations

The Awards Committee for the Society for Medical Decision Making is soliciting nominations for the following awards: Career Achievement Award The Career Achievement Award recognizes a senior investigator who has made significant contributions to the field of medical decision making. The nominee need not be a member of SMDM. SMDM Award for Distinguished Service This award recognizes service to SMDM in terms of leadership, role in the operations of the Society, and contributions to the scientific and educational activities of the Society. The nominee must be a member of SMDM.  John M. Eisenberg Award for Practical Application of Medical Decision Making Research This award recognizes sustained leadership in translating medical decision making research into practice, including taking exceptional steps to communicate the principles and/or substantive findings of medical decision making research to policy makers, clinical decision makers, or the general public. The nominee need not be a member of SMDM.   Outstanding Paper by a Young Investigator This award was conceived as a means of recognizing outstanding work by a young researcher and assisting the recipient in the tenure process. The award is for a paper published, online or in print, in the calendar year prior to the award (journal must be published in 2018 for the 2019 award). The nominee must be in the first six (6) years of full-time employment after the end of “training” however that is defined within the country and field of the nominee. Nominations sought for naming of the Lee B. Lusted Award in Patient and Stakeholder Preferences and Engagement Category SMDM seeks nominations of exceptional candidates who have made contributions in the area of Patient and Stakeholder Preferences and Engagement (PSPE) to have the Lee B. Lusted Student Awards in PSPE named after him/her. The honoree will have the sub-award named for him/her for five years. Candidates for the PSPE sub-award will be evaluated according to the following criteria: Made a seminal contribution to the field Ongoing contributions/involvement with the Society Role in teaching and mentoring   The goal is for the named set of awards to reflect the diversity of our SMDM community as well as the diversity of our research as a Society. There are five categories for the Lee B. Lusted Awards: Decision Psychology and Shared Decision Making, Quantitative Methods and Theoretical Developments, Applied Health Economics, Heath Services, Outcomes, and Policy Research, and Patient and Stakeholder Preferences and Engagement. For the period 2017-2022, the Lee B. Lusted Student Award in the Decision Psychology & Shared Decision Making (DEC) category is named in honor of  Margaret Holmes-Rovner . For the period 2018-2023, the Lee B. Lusted Student Award in the Quantitative Methods & Theoretical Developments (QMTD) category is named in honor of Stephen Pauker.     The deadline to submit all award nominations is  Friday, February 22, 2019 at 5 PM ET.  Please consider nominating a colleague, mentor, or mentee for an award and/or ask your mentors or colleagues to nominate you for an award!

Learn More and Submit an Award Nomination

Call for Applications for Editor-in-Chief of SMDM Journals Medical Decision Making and Medical Decision Making Policy and Practice Application Deadline: Monday, March 18, 2019 The Editor-in-Chief oversees SMDM’s two official journals: Medical Decision Making (MDM) founded in 1981 and the open access journal Medical Decision Making Policy and Practice (MDM P&P) founded in 2016. The Editor-in-Chief will build and manage an Editorial Office to manage both journals and to undertake the responsibilities outlined below. SMDM seeks Editor-in-Chief applicants for the term January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2025 . View the Job Description and Requirements Online Application

SMDM Courses and Trainings are Now Available Onsite! SMDM is pleased to offer onsite courses and speakers for panels and symposia in shared decision making and risk communication. SMDM is often invited to offer the high-quality courses and symposia we offer at our annual meetings as onsite trainings for clinicians, researchers and other stakeholders who are unable to attend SMDM meetings. While we have been able to respond to some requests, we have had to decline a number of offers. But not anymore! Announcing SMDM Onsite Trainings ! SMDM is now able to offer our trainings in settings that are convenient for those who are unable to attend SMDM meetings. Click on the blue button below to complete a brief survey if you are interested in learning more about SMDM's onsite trainings program. Please contact Jill Metcalf at jill.metcalf@smdm.org with any questions . This program is supported by funding from the Hess Foundation. Learn More about the SMDM Onsite Training Program

Wade Smith, PhD Leah Yieh, MD, MPH

Wade Smith and Leah Yieh Complete SMDM's Core Course Curriculum in Medical Decision Making Congratulations to Wade Smith , PhD and Leah Yieh, MD, MPH for completing the Core Course Curriculum in Medical Decision Making. Wade and Leah completed the curriculum at the 40th Annual Meeting in Montreal in October 2018. The SMDM Curriculum is an initiative of the Society with the goal of having a set of introductory level Core Courses in foundational aspects of medical decision making. This effort serves the core mission of the Society to educate its members in key content areas. Core courses are offered at SMDM meetings in North America and Europe. Learn More About SMDM's Core Course Curriculum

MEMBER NEWS

Latest News From Your Fellow Members On August 23, David Broniatowski , PhD, The George Washington University, published the following paper: D. A. Broniatowski, A. M. Jamison, S. Qi, L. AlKulaib, T. Chen, A. Benton, S. C. Quinn, and M. Dredze. “ Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate ,” American Journal of Public Health, e1–e7. Since publication, the paper has been covered by hundreds of news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Politico, Forbes, Fortune, U.S. News and World Report, and others. It was the front page story in The Guardian on August 23. ( broniatowski@gwu.edu ) Dr. France Legare , B. Sc. Arch, MD, MSc, PhD, CCMF, FCMF, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Shared Decision Making and Knowledge Translation at Universite Laval and a member of SMDM for many years, was listed among the top 1% most cited scientists by Clarivate Analytics (Thomson-Reuters) in 2017 and 2018 indicating that her work has been repeatedly judged by her peers to be of notable significance and utility. ( france.legare@mfa.ulaval.ca ) In 2018 Danny van Leeuwen, OPA, RN, MPH, began to co-chair the newly constituted Patient-Centered Clinical Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)'s Clinical Effectiveness and Decision Science Advisory Panel. He participated in the: Center for Medicare and Medicaid and (CMS)'s Supporting Efficiency and Innovation in the Process of Developing CMS Quality Measures, Technical Expert Panel National Academy of Medicine’s Digital Learning Collaborative, Patient Ownership of Data – Implications for a Learning Health System National Academy of Medicine’s Digital Learning Collaborative, Generating Stakeholder Support and Demand for Leveraging and Sharing Data for Continuous Learning AHRQ-supported Patient-Centered Clinical Decision Support (PCCDS) Learning Network, Steering Committee  He spoke at: Beryl Conference: 'Supporting Family Caregivers Through Care Transitions' Medical Group Management Association Conference: 'Care About Caring: Boosting Engagement in a Value-Based World' International Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia Foundation: 'Making Choices About Your Health with Your Team' Brown University: 'Patient Engagement: Current and Future State' PCCDS-LN Annual meeting: 'Managing Pain: One Person’s Point of View' National Caregiving Conference: 'Reading the Room: Lessons from the Clowns to Take into the Doctor Visit' All conference materials can be found at the Health Hats website .( danny@health-hats.com) Janet Panoch , MA, PhD Candidate, IUPUI, has accepted the position of Patient Education and Information Manager for the Amputee Coalition in Knoxville, TN. Janet is developing decision aids and informational materials for persons with limb loss; she has a special interest in shared decision making (SDM). Janet is a PhD candidate in Health Communication at IUPUI and her dissertation is a post intervention qualitative inquiry of the patient communication skills training program for high school health and wellness classes. ( jpanoch@iu.edu ) As of October 1, 2018, Kimberly Garza , PharmD, MBA, PhD, Auburn University Harrison School of Pharmacy, was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure. ( kbl0005@auburn.edu ) Douglas McKell , MS, Dartmouth, MSc, LSE, PgC HEOR, Elms College, School of Nursing, DNP Program, is active in the over-diagnosis, over-treatment discussions in the US, especially as it pertains to the clinical decision-making processes involved (cognitive, affective, social, economic, and environmental). For part of this work I was interviewed for a blog posting by the Right Care Alliance , about an important double-blind, placebo-controlled Cardiac study, ORBITA , that demonstrated little or no benefit of stents for patients with stable angina, the majority of who are currently considered appropriate candidates for this medical procedure. My comments were directed at why these results, specifically the implications to reduce stenting these patients, were being resisted so vigorously by cardiologists and what was "behind their resistance to change in the face of considerable evidence showing no patients benefit from stenting". ( douglas.mckell@gmail.com ) Researchers affiliated with the Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV, and HIV ( CHERISH ) recently published a study on the cost-effectiveness of extended-release naltrexone (XR-NTX) versus buprenorphine-naloxone (BUP-NX) to prevent opioid relapse among individuals initiating treatment in an inpatient detoxification setting to Annals of Internal Medicine . The cost-effectiveness analysis found that BUP-NX was preferred to XR-NTX as the first line of treatment from the healthcare sector and societal perspectives, due to the similarity in effectiveness between the therapies and the higher cost of the XR-NTX treatment strategy; a reduction in the cost of the XR-NTX injection and less costly modes of treatment initiation would likely improve its relative economic value. In addition to a cost analysis published in the American Journal of Managed Care, this study accompanied a NIDA-funded clinical trial, the results of which were published in the Lacet in January in 2018. Lead author Dr. Sean Murphy serves as Consultation Service Director for CHERISH, and SMDM member and senior author Dr. Bruce Schackman services as CHERISH Center Director. ( brs2006@med.cornell.edu)

Student News Congratulations to our recent graduates! Lisa Lohmueller, PhD Degree/Graduation Date: August 2018 Area: Disease prognosis and design of decision support tools Position Seeking: Academic; post-doc; non-profit research Advisor: James Antaki Dissertation Title: Development and utilization of Bayesian prognostic models in a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) decision support tool  E-Mail: lcarey@cmu.edu

What Are You Working On? Connect and collaborate with your fellow members on their latest projects: Douglas McKell , MS, Dartmouth, MSc, LSE, PgC HEOR, Elms College, School of Nursing, DNP Program, is working on ways to better understand the processes involved in learning essential clinical decision-making skills in student populations of healthcare care providers, specifically Doctoral-level Advance Practice Registered Nurses and Physician Assistants. Questions include: what should they learn, what can they learn what are they learning, and where are they learning it in their respect programs prior to graduation, certification and/or licensure. ( douglas.mckell@gmail.com ) Related Links: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/nrp/2011/524918/ https://www.ncsbn.org/Clinical_Judgment_Lit_Review_Executive_Summary.pdf https://www.nursingcenter.com/cearticle?an=01709760-201307000-00001 Lisa Lohmueller , PhD, Carnegie Mellon University, is working at the intersection of machine learning, design, and patient engagement. Her current project is to develop an interactive tool that promotes conversation between patients with end-stage heart failure and their caregivers, as they decide whether a mechanical circulatory support device is the right treatment option. Technology in the tool is leveraged from text-based analysis to trigger interactions in online classrooms and discussion rooms. She is also starting research on abstracting important information from conversations between doctors and patients to develop useful visualizations for patients and to develop surrogate metrics for patient activation and engagement. Patient populations of particular interest for this research are pregnant women, heart failure patients, breast cancer patients, and prostate cancer patients. ( lcarey@cmu.edu ) Related links: www.mycora.org www.myphora.org

OTHER NEWS

Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine Fellowship Program The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine (SIDM) has a  Fellowship program  available to support the next generation of researchers in diagnostic quality and safety. We can help match you with experienced mentors in the SIDM community who are recognized leaders in the fields of diagnostic error education, research, or practice improvement. Funded by the Gordon Betty Moore Foundation, this Fellowship position provides a stipend for work done as part of an institutional degree program. Opportunities are provided for Fellows to present their work at SIDM’s Annual Meeting on Diagnostic Error in Medicine, and Fellows are encouraged to publish their work in  Diagnosis  and other peer-reviewed journals. The deadline to apply for a SIDM Fellowship for the 2019-2020 academic year is  March 15, 2019 .

Apply for the SIDM Fellowship

JOB POSTINGS

Here are the most recent job opportunities since our last newsletter. SMDM members can stay current on the newest opportunities in the Resources Section of SMDM Connect .

University of Michigan Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine - Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Position University of Utah Department of Population Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowships Tufts University School of Medicine - Assistant/Associate Professor Department of Public Health & Community Medicine University of Vermont - Doctoral Level Health Services Researcher University of Alabama at Birmingham - Outcomes Research Faculty Positions Virginia Commonwealth University – Open Rank Tenure Track Position in Dept. of Health Behavior and Policy Moffitt Cancer Center: Three Positions in Health Outcomes and Behavior Postdoctoral position to fill on a project funded by the Center for the Assessment of the Public Health Impact of Tobacco Regulations part of the NIH TCORS program (tobacco epidemiology/modeling/simulations) University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Health Services Research Faculty Position Brown University - Assistant, Associate or Full Professor (Tenure-track or Tenured) Health Services Research Kent State University - Open Rank, Tenure-Track Faculty Position in Psychological Science and Health Health Services Researcher Assistant/Associate Professor - Emory University Department of Pediatrics and the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta University of Michigan Department of Health Management And Policy - Tenure Track Faculty Position Merck Sharpe & Dohme Corp. - Open Positions

2019 ANNUAL FUND GIVING

The SMDM Lifetime Contributors list acknowledges the SMDM members who have made contributions to the Annual Fund and acknowledges donations and in-kind donations, received from October 2005 - December 31, 2018. Our heartfelt appreciation goes out to everyone who has supported our Society! View the SMDM Lifetime Contributors List Donate Today to the 2019 Annual Fund

EDITORIAL STAFF

Editor-in-Chief Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD University of Michigan

Deputy Editor Ellen G. Engelhardt, PhD Netherlands Cancer Institute