Check out this Risk BitesYouTube video co-presented by Brian Zikmund-Fisher entitled, “What have feelings got to do with risk?”

Lauren Smith, Robert Silbergleit, Sacha Montas and colleagues fielded a great team in this year’s Big Ethical Question Slam. The Ethics slam is an annual community event hosted by A2Ethics.org.

The Genetics in Primary Care Institute recently launched its new website, featuring co-chairperson Beth Tarini, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

Along with Robert Saul, M.D., Tarini co-chairs the Institute, which aims to take genetic advances made during the last decade and help make them useful in the practice of primary care pediatrics.

The new website, www.geneticsinprimarycare.org, features information for primary care providers related to genetics testing, ethical, legal and social issues, patient communication and family history.

Tarini’s research focuses on the communication process and the health outcomes associated with genetic testing in pediatrics. She is particularly interested in pediatric population-based screening programs, such as newborn screening. Through her research, Tarini seeks to optimize communication about genetic testing between parents and providers in an effort to maximize health and minimize harm.

The UMHS press release can be found here. Dr. Tarini's featured page can be found here. 

CBSSM is co-sponsoring the MICHR Research Education Symposium: Life at the Interface of Genomics and Clinical Care. This event will be held March 15th, 8-1 pm. Keynote speaker is Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, JD, MD, Rosalind E. Franklin Professor of Genetics and Health Policy; Craig-Weaver Professor of Pediatrics; Professor of Law; and Director, Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Wright Clayton’s topic will be “Addressing Biomedical Ethics.”

Learn more or register here.

The Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine (CBSSM) Research Colloquium will be held Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at the Founders Room of the Alumni Center, 200 Fletcher Street, Ann Arbor, MI.

Click here to register for the Colloquium!

Click here for the Colloquium Schedule and Presentation Abstracts.

More details about the CBSSM Research Colloquium and Bishop Lecture can be found at: http://cbssm.org/events

Beth Tarini has been awarded the Benz Birth Defects Research Award for $20,000 to support her research project “Knowing Your Child’s Genome: Exploring Parents’ Decision-Making Process Regarding Genomic Sequencing of Children.” Congratulations!

Scott Kim, Ray De Vries and colleagues have a new article out: "How Important is 'Accuracy' of Surrogate Decision-Making for Research Participation?” published online in PLOS ONE. Click here for full article.

Susan Dorr Goold and colleagues have a new article out in Health Affairs, entitled “Focus Groups Highlight That Many Patients Object to Clinicians’ Focusing on Costs.” Click here for full article.

Susan Dorr Goold, MD, MHSA, MA recently contributed an ethics case entitled, “Is the Standard of Care Always Worth the Cost?” The case tackles the Virtual Mentor theme issue “Hospitals: Business or Public Service?” Click here for more information.

In the January-February issue of IRB: Ethics & Human Research, Scott Y.H. Kim, Raymond de Vries, Renee Wilson, Sonali Parnami, Samuel Frank, Karl Kieburtz, and Robert G. Holloway present results of a study about the therapeutic orientation of research participants.

The authors examined the relationship between understanding and appreciation of randomization probabilities in 29 individuals recruited for a sham surgery controlled intervention study in Parkinson's disease. 83% provided the correct, quantitative answer to the understanding question; of those, one group (55%) answered the appreciation question correctly using quantitative terms, whereas the remaining group (45%) provided only qualitative comments.

The therapeutic orientation of research participants raises concerns about the adequacy of consent because such an orientation could cloud understanding of key elements of research. Further, even if participants understand (i.e., intellectually comprehend) elements of research, they may not appreciate them because they fail to apply such facts to themselves.

Study participants frequently made "unrealistic" probability statements, even while providing correct quantitative responses. Analysis showed that this apparent "irrationality" may in fact hide a deeper rationality -- namely, conversational rationality, which is part of the contextual nature of meaning conveyed in everyday language. Ignoring conversational rationality may lead to wrongly labeling research subjects as irrational. Click here for more information.

Risk Sense has posted a new item written by Brian Zikmund-Fisher entitled, 'When Risk Communications Are Precise, Accurate and Utterly Meaningless'

Risk communications can be accurate and precise representations of risk likelihoods yet meaningless when their quantitative precision is both (a) unnecessary for effective decision making and (b) and distracting, thereby preventing the audience from understanding the simpler “gist” that they do need for decision making. Click here for more information.

Check out Brian Zikmund-Fisher’s article in Risk Sense: “Do You Know What Messages Your Patient Stories Are Really Sending?” in which he discusses a purpose, content, and valence-based taxonomy of patient narratives in decision aids.

 More information can also be found in:  Victoria A. Shaffer and Brian J. Zikmund-Fisher (2013). All Stories Are Not Alike: A Purpose-, Content-, and Valence-Based Taxonomy of Patient Narratives in Decision Aids. Med Decis Making, 33: 4-13. doi:10.1177/0272989X12463266

The Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine (CBSSM) Research Colloquium will be held Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at the Founders Room of the Alumni Center, 200 Fletcher Street, Ann Arbor, MI.

Abstract submissions are welcome from all disciplines. CBSSM is an interdisciplinary center focusing on bioethics and social sciences in medicine. Please find abstract submission forms and details here.

The 2013 Bishop Lecture in Bioethics and Research Colloquium will take place April 17, 2013. Ruth Macklin, PhD will be our 2013 Ronald C. and Nancy V. Bishop Lecturer in Bioethics.

Dr. Macklin is a Professor of Epidemiology & Population Health and Dr. Shoshanah Trachtenberg Frackman Faculty Scholar in Biomedical Ethics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Macklin also serves as an adviser to the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). She is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, a member of the Board of Directors of  the International Association of Bioethics, and is Co-Director of an NIH Fogarty International Center training program in research ethics.

The Bishop Lecture in Bioethics will be jointly presented by the Bishop Lectureship in Bioethics fund and by the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine (CBSSM). 

We will soon be sending out a call for abstracts for the Research Colloquium presentations. Abstract submissions are welcome from all disciplines. Please watch www.cbssm.org for more details.

CBSSM, in conjunction with the UM Risk Science Center, is pleased to release iconarray.com: A free, tailorable, embeddable generator of the type of icon array ("pictograph") risk graphics that CBSSM researchers have long used and built an evidence base to support. Click here for more information.

Application materials from qualified candidates are now being accepted for the 2013-2014 CBSSM post-doctoral research fellow program.  Please see http://cbssm.org/post_doc for more information.  

A new $13.6 million program award from the National Cancer Institute awarded to a national team of researchers centered at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center will examine how patients make treatment decisions, how doctors make treatment recommendations and how to improve the process for better outcomes.

Steven J Katz, MD, MPH, Co-Director of the Socio-Behavioral Program at the UM Comprehensive Cancer Center is the principal investigator on this new program grant.

Several CBSSM-affiliated faculty are involved with this project: Sarah Hawley, PhD, MPH and Jennifer Griggs, MD, MPH are program lead investigators, and Angela Fagerlin, PhD (CBSSM Co-Director) and Reshma Jagsi, MD, PhD are also investigators on this grant. Click here for more information.

Dr. Darin Zahuranec, assistant professor of neurology and CBSSM Investigator, was quoted in an article on BET.com about his study on hypertension and brain-bleed strokes. He told BET.com, "We need to do more for our patients to help them get their blood pressure under control." Click here for more information.

Susan Goold was recently elected Vice Chair of the AMA Council on Ethical and Judician Affairs (CEJA).  CEJA is tasked with developing ethics policy for the AMA; it prepares reports analyzing timely ethical issues that confront members of the medical profession.  Click here for more information.

On Thursday, March 22, 3:30-4:45, at the School of Public Health (SPH I, Rm 1655), we are pleased to announce that Amy McGuire, JD, PhD, of Baylor College of Medicine will give a talk entitled, “Biobanking and Genomic Research: Ethical Challenges and Policy Implications.”   Dr. McGuire is Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics and Associate Director of Research at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine.  Her research focuses on legal and ethical issues in genomics.  She is currently studying participant attitudes toward genomic data sharing, investigators’ practices and perspectives on the return of genetic research results, ethical issues in human microbiome research, and ethical and policy issues related to the clinical integration of genomics.  Her research is funded by the NIH-NHGRI and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.  The talk is co-sponsored by the School of Public Health and will be followed by a reception.

Between February 3 and April 13, 2012, in collaboration with the Taubman Health Sciences Library and the Center for the History of Medicine, CBSSM is co-sponsoring an exhibit entitled "Deadly medicine: Creating the Master Race" on the 4th floor of the Taubman library.  This traveling exhibit is a spin-off of the larger exhibit that debuted at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.  For more information about the exhibit, click here.

Dr. Jason Karlawish, Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, will discuss his forthcoming novel, "Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont" on Thursday, October 20, 3-5 pm, at the Biomedical Research Science Building (BSRB), Room 1130.  "Open Wound" is a fictional account of true events along the early 19th century American frontier, tracing the relationship between Dr. William Beaumont and his illiterate French Canadian patient.  The young trapper sustains an injury that never heals, leaving a hole in his stomach that the curious doctor uses as a window both to understand the mysteries of digestion and to advance his career.  A reception will follow the talk, and books will be available for purchase on site from Nicola's Books.  The event is co-sponsored by the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine, the Center for the History of Medicine, and the University of Michigan Press.  Click here for more information about the book. 

Pfizer offers fellowship programs to support career development and promotion of junior physician scientists or researchers.  Fellowships are awarded to institutions, who in turn select the fellow(s).  Grant payments typically begin in July of each year for two years.  Award recipients are selected by an independent academic advisory board of prominent medical academicians specific to that program's therapeutic area or discipline.  Click here for more information.

Investigators Naomi Laventhal and Kathryn Moseley (with several other colleagues) have proposed to teach an elective for M2 students in the U-M Medical School this year.  Titled, "Pediatric Ethics and Ethics Consultation," the elective will focus on the ethical issues surrounding the pediatric patient.  The goal is to introduce medical students to basic concepts used in pediatric ethics via case studies and a mock ethics consultation.  The M2 elective provides medical students with an opportunity to explore specialized topics.

CBSSM aims to play a key role in enhancing the integration of bioethics into the U-M medical school curriculum.  The M2 elective offers an opportunity to deepen student learning around bioethics in medicine. 

Save the date: Wednesday, November 9, 2011, 4:00-5:30 pm, Ford Auditorium, UM Hospital

Laura Roberts, MD, Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, will give the Raymond W. Waggoner, MD, Lecture on Ethics & Values in Medicine.  She will also speak at the Psychiatry Department Grand Rounds Wednesday, November 9, 10:30-12:00, Rachel Upjohn Bldg, 4250 Plymouth Road.

Click here to view supplementary content, including a video of one of the authors, of a paper by Ray De Vries, Aimee Stanczyk, Ian Wall, Rebecca Uhlmann, Laura Damschroder, and Scott Kim. 

De Vries R, Stanczyk A, Wall IF, Uhlmann RA, Damschroder L, Kim SY. Assessing the quality of democratic deliberation: A case study of public deliberation on the ethics of surrogate consent for research. Social Science and Medicine 2011;70(12):1896-1903.

Please consider attending the Health Services Research Group Launch Symposium at the North Campus Research Complex (Building 18) on Thursday, May 26, 7:30am - 5:00 pm.  The purpose is to discuss the HSR Group's goals and future plans, discuss relevant topics in healthcare policy, and network with colleagues.  Even if you are unable to attend, go to the registration page to indicate your interest in health services research and health policy so that you may be contacted again in the future.  Click here to register.

In addition, there is an effort to collect information on all HSR groups on campus for purposes of networking and for junior investigators or newcomers to U-M to find colleagues and collaborators.  Preliminary information will be provided at the Symposium and later a Wiki website will be created.  Please send the main research theme(s) of the group/center; rough idea about the investigators, divisions, departments, schools; website URL, if applicable; seminar information, if applicable; and contact information to Joe Zogaib at [email protected].

The University of Michigan Decision Consortium Conference is scheduled for Monday, May 16, in Room R0320, Ross School of Business, 700 Tappan Street.  Advance registration is required.  Contact Mary Mohrbach at [email protected]. 

This two-day conference took place on the UM campus and is presented by the University of Michigan Medical School.  It was also supported by the Office of the Vice President for Research; the Center for Ethics and Public Life; Rackham Distinguished Faculty Grant; Greenwall Foundation; and Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.  Click here for conference videos, course packets, and reference materials. 

Dr. Brian Zikmund-Fisher is an occasional contributor to U-M's Risk Science Center blog.  Click here to read his latest posting and to view other contributions.

Andrea Fuhrel-Forbis, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, is a co-investigator on a recent award from the Helen L. Kay Pediatric Cancer Research Award.  The PI is Amanda Dempsey in Pediatrics, and the project is entitled, "Hormonal responses to patient education materials and their relationship to HPV vaccination intention and behaviors." 

Dr. Naomi Laventhal has received the Holden Research Fund Award for her research entitled, "Off-label use of therapeutic hypothermia in the newborn intensive care units: A survey of U.S. neonatologists."

Edward Goldman is a member of an NIH-funded working group focusing on promoting public dialogue regarding the creation of biorepositories and the use of residual newborn screening samples for research.  In January 2011, Goldman will speak to this group at its national meeting at the University of Utah.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, recently gave a talk at the 38th annual North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) meeting, held November 13-17, 2010, in Seattle, WA.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, was a co-presenter at the 38th annual North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) meeting held November 13-17, 2010, in Seattle, WA.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, was a co-presenter at the 38th annual North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) meeting, November 13-17, 2010, in Seattle, WA.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, was co-presenter at the 38th annual North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) meeting, November 13-17, 2010, in Seattle, WA.

CBSSM is co-sponsoring a talk given by Dr. Sujatha Jesudason, Executive Director of Generations Ahead, as part of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program's Fall 2010 lecture series.  The talk is titled, "Threading a Very Fine Needle: Race, Gender, and the Public Policy of Reproductive Genetic Technologies" and will be given on Monday, November 22, 4 pm, at 1110 Weill Hall, 735 S. State Street. 

CBSSM co-sponsored the 15th Annual Waggoner Bioethics Lecture on November 3, 2010, hosting a breakfast in honor of the speaker, Dr. Bernard Lo, Director of the Program in Medical Ethics at UCSF.  The Waggoner lecture is organized by the Department of Psychiatry in honor of Dr. Raymond Waggoner, chair of the department from 1937 to 1970.

On September 10-11, 2010, the Public Deliberation, Ethics and Health Policy Symposium was held on the U-M campus in Ann Arbor.  Jointly funded by a University of Michigan Center for Ethics in Public Life program grant and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the symposium was coordinated by Dr. Susan Goold, together with Julia Abelson at McMaster University and Erika Blacksher at the University of Washington.

The purpose of the inaugural symposium was to reflect on questions about the rationale, methods, and use of public deliberation for addressing complex and morally challenging health policy problems.  Invited participants included CBSSM co-director Scott Kim and Raymond De Vries.

J. Scott Roberts, PhD, received an R01 award from NHGRI for a multi-site, randomized controlled clinical trial to examine the impact and efficacy of a genetic risk assessment program that educates people with mild cognitive impairment about their chances of developing Alzheimer's disease.

J. Scott Roberts, PhD, received an R01 grant from NHGRI for a project that will describe the characteristics of consumers of DTC genetic services and to evaluate the psychological and behavioral impact of these services.

Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD, is the featured guest editor for a special supplement to Medical Decision Making's September/October 2010 issue, highlighting the DECISIONS study, a nationwide survey of adults in the US regarding common medical decisions.  Lead author on the main paper of the supplement, Zikmund-Fisher and co-authors (including CBSSM faculty Angela Fagerlin, PhD and Mick Couper, PhD) describe the DECISIONS study, a telephone interview of a nationally representative sample of 3010 adults age 40 and over faced with making a medical decision in the past two years.  Researchers defined medical decisions as the patient having initiated medications, been screened, or had surgery within the past 2 years or having discussed these actions with a health care provider during the same interval.  Key findings from the study:

Although patients frequently receive information about the benefits of a procedure or medication, they don't always learn about the disadvantages.

Healthcare providers don't always ask patients what they want to do.

Most patients don't use the Internet to help them make common medical decisions; healthcare professionals remain the most important source of information.

Patients often don't know as much as they think they do.  Many patients feel well informed even when they don't know key facts that would help them make a better decision.

African-Americans and Hispanics were less knowledgeable than other patients about medications to treat high cholesterol.  In addition, they were more likely to say their doctor made decisions about cholesterol medications for them.

Most patients think they are more likely to get cancer than they really are, and tend to view cancer screenings as more accurate than they are.

Men and women think about cancer risks differently.  Women are more active participants in cancer screening decisions regardless of their perception of risk, whereas men tended to get involved only if they felt at higher risk.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, presented at the 6th Mixed Methods International Conference, Baltimore, MD, in July 2010.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, was co-presenter at the Annual Michigan Family Medicine Research Day XXXIII Conference, Howell, Michigan, in May 2010.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, was co-presenter at the Annual Michigan Family Medicine Research Day XXXIII Conference, Howell, MI, in May 2010.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, was co-presenter at the Annual Michigan Family Medicine Research Day XXXIII Conference, Howell, MI, in May 2010.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, presented at Grand Rounds, St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, Ypsilanti, MI, in May 2010.

Maria Silveira, MD, MPH, is the lead author on an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (April 1, 2010) on end-of-life decision making. Silveira and her colleagues found in a large-scale study that more than a quarter of the elderly lacked decision-making capacity as they approached death. Those who had advance directives were very likely to get the care that they wanted. Co-authors on the study are Kenneth Langa, MD, PhD, and Scott Y.H. Kim, MD, PhD. Read a press release about the article here.

Ian Wall, former CBSSM Research Associate, has been awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for his upcoming doctoral work in sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The three-year award includes an annual stipend, tuition allowance, and travel allowance. Ian, who works with Scott Kim, MD, PhD, and Ray DeVries, PhD, will be starting his program at Madison in fall 2010.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, presented at the Shizuoka Family Medicine Training Program, Iwata City, Japan, in April 2010.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, presented at the Shizuoka Family Medicine Training Program in Iwata City, Japan, in April 2010.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, presented at the Shizuoka Family Medicine Training Program in Kikugawa, Japan, in April 2010.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, presented at the Shizuoka Family Medicine Training Program in Kikugawa, Japan, in April 2010.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, presented at the Shizuoka Family Medicine Training Program in Kikugawa, Japan, in April 2010.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, presented at the Shizuoka Family Medicine Training Program in Iwata City, Japan, in April 2010.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, presented at the Shizuoka Family Medicine Training Program in Iwata City, Japan, in April 2010.

Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, is the lead author on a new study showing that breast cancer patients who have had mastectomies and need radiation are less likely to receive these treatments than patients who have had lumpectomies. The article appears in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (online March 29, 2010). Additional authors are Paul Abrahamse, Sarah T. Hawley, Jennifer J. Griggs, Steven J. Katz, Monica Morrow, John J. Graff, and Ann S. Hamilton. Read a press release about the research here.

Holly Witteman, Research Fellow at CBSSM, has been awarded a $25,000 Robert Derzon Post-Doctoral Grant from the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making for her project entitled "Development and Evaluation of Interactive Interfaces for Values Exploration and Clarification." Pending IRB approval, the project is slated to commence in April 2010. Witteman has been working since fall 2009 under the mentorship of Angela Fagerlin. CBSSM extends its congratulations!

Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD, is the senior author on a study led by Donna M. Zulman, MD, that reveals about a third of doctors and their patients with diabetes do not agree on which of the patient's health conditions is most important. In the study, 38% of physicians (compared to 18% of patients) ranked hypertension as the most important condition. Patients were more likely to prioritize symptoms such as pain and depression. Read the article, in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, here. Read a press release about the article here.

Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA, Associate Professor, presented at Al Hagar Auditorium at HMC, Doha, QA; and at the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, Doha, QA, in February 2010.

The vast majority of oncologists (84%) say that they consider costs to the patient when recommending cancer treatments. But fewer than half of oncologists frequently discuss cost issues with their patients. These are some of the results of a national survey conducted by Peter Neuman, ScD (Tufts Medical Center) and CBSSM's former Director Peter A. Ubel, MD, funded by the California HealthCare Foundation. Results were published in the January 2010 Health Affairs. Ubel comments: "Oncologists understand, from up close, that cancer diagnoses and treatment leave many people bankrupt. They want to do what is medically right for their patients, but they are struggling to figure out what, at the same time, is economically right for them." Read the article here.

Oxford University Press has published Evaluation of Capacity to Consent to Treatment and Research, by CBSSM's Co-director Scott Kim, MD, PhD. The book is part of the series Best Practices in Forensic Mental Health Assessment. For further information about this volume, click here.

CBSSM's Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, is the lead author on a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine showing that women are less likely than men to receive major funding for scientific research. The study also found that only a quarter of all researchers (men and women) who received major early-career awards received further federal funding within five years. Additional authors are Amy Motomura, Kent Griffith, and Soumya Rangarajan. Read a press release about the article here.

Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD, is one of three speakers in a recent public health webcast on strategies for conveying the health risks of the H1N1 virus. Zikmund-Fisher is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and CBSSM. To view the webcast, click here.

Several CBSSM faculty contributed to an article by lead author Monica Morrow, MD, that appeared recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The authors investigated the concern that mastectomy is overused in the US. In surveying 1,984 patients, they found that 75% had breast-conserving surgery as their initial surgical therapy. Of these, 38% required additional surgery. Although breast-conserving surgery was recommended by surgeons and attempted in the majority of patients evaluated, the mastectomy rate was affected by surgeon recommendation, patient decision, and failure of breast-conserving surgery. CBSSM faculty contributing to this article were Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil; Amy K. Alderman, MD; Jennifer J. Griggs, MD, MPH; and Sarah T. Hawley, PhD. Other authors included Ann A. Hamilton, PhD; John J. Graff, PhD; and Steven J. Katz, MD, MPH. Read the article at http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/vol302/issue14/index.dtl.

CBSSM's Ray DeVries, PhD, along with Mark Pearlman, MD (UM professor of obstetrics and gynecology), and UM doctoral student Ann V. Bell recently published an op-ed column in the New York Times. They discuss the delayed diagnosis of breast cancer and how it is the most common and the second most costly medical claim against American doctors. Read the full article: NY Times

Angela Fagerlin, PhD, has received the American Psychological Association's 2009 Award for Outstanding Contributions to Health Psychology (Division 38, Junior Category). The award was presented at the APA convention in Toronto in early August. CBSSM sends congratulations on this exceptional achievement by one of its Co-directors!

A study by Beth Tarini, MD, has found that more than three-quarters of parents would be willing to permit use of their newborn's blood screening sample for research if their permission were obtained in advance. However, more than half of the parents said they would be "very unwilling" to permit this use of blood samples unless they were given a chance to grant or deny permission. For a discussion of this important article, go to http://www2.med.umich.edu/prmc/media/newsroom/details.cfm?ID=1217

is the title of a project assessing the impact of different features of a web-based decision aid to improve patient decision making for asymptomatic carotid disease. This project was recently funded by the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. Ethan A. Halm, MD, MPH (Univerity of Texas Southwestern Medical Center) will be working with CBSSM's Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD, on this research that will compare two decision aids related to surgery to prevent stroke.  

Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, has found that 29% of cancer research published in high-impact journals disclosed a conflict of interest, including industry funding of the study or a study author who was an industry employee. "Given the frequency we observed for conflicts of interest and the fact that conflicts were associated with study outcomes, I would suggest that merely disclosing conflicts is probably not enough. It's becoming increasingly clear that we need to look more at how we can disentangle cancer research from industry ties," comments Jagsi. The study, which has received wide media attention, was published in the journal Cancer, online at  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122381054/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 

Additional authors are Nathan Sheets, Aleksandra Jankovic, Amy R. Motomura, Sudha Amarnath, and Peter A. Ubel.

Caitlin Weber has been presented the 2009 Laurie Kittl Luzynski Administrative Professional Award. This award honors a staff member in the Department of Internal Medicine who has particular commitment to continuing education and to wellness awareness, in addition to a positive attitude and team spirit. The Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of Michigan presents the award annually in memory of a highly respected staff member in their unit. Weber, who was the Administrative Assistant for CBSSM, was nominated by CBSSM staff.

Be sure to post a comment at peterubel.com, the blog of the former CBSSM director, Peter A. Ubel, MD. Dr. Ubel's commentaries range across science, policy, health, well-being, and ethics. Topics include bankruptcy, behavior, and building; nuances, nature, and neighborhoods; soccer, satire, and scientocracy.

During the winter term of 2009, CBSSM welcomed Yvette Peeters, a doctoral student in medical decision making at the University of Leiden Medical Center in the Netherlands. Yvette holds an MSc in clinical and health psychology plus psychometrics and research methodology. Her current interests include utility elicitation, quality of life, emotional adaptation, and survey methodology. During her stay at CBSSM, Yvette's academic mentor was Dylan Smith, PhD.

CBSSM Co-director Scott Kim, MD, PhD, has recently been funded by the NIH for a project on therapeutic misconception and the ethics of sham surgery. Ethicists have raised concerns that elderly patients with a progressively debilitating disease such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) may be too vulnerable for research that involves novel, invasive interventions that use a controversial masking design, i.e., sham neurosurgical controls. Are these subjects laboring under a therapeutic misconception, erroneously believing that research, rather than being an experimental procedure for the sake of creating knowledge to help future patients, is actually a novel form of treatment intended to help them? Dr. Kim’s project will study four actual PD clinical trials that involve a sham surgery control. Collaborators include R. DeVries, K. Kieburtz, R. Wilson, S. Frank, and H.M. Kim. Pilot funding came from the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

19% of women who should receive radiation after mastectomy are not getting this treatment, according to new research results now online in the journal Cancer. CBSSM's Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, is the lead author on this study, which found that the most common reason that women in this high-risk group cited for not considering the treatment was that their doctors did not recommend it. See more information at the University of Michigan Health System Newsroom.

For human-subjects research, maximum regulation does not mean maximum protection. Stop regulating minimal risk research, say Scott Kim, Peter Ubel and Raymond De Vries in their new commentary in Nature.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7229/pdf/457534a.pdf

Free Market Madness: Why Human Nature Is at Odds with Economics--and Why It Matters is the third book by former CBSSM Peter Ubel, MD. Dr. Ubel explains that our free-market economy is based on the assumption that we always act in our own self-interest. But, using his understanding of psychology and behavior, he then shows that humans are not always rational, and he argues that in some cases government must regulate markets for our own health and well-being. Dr. Ubel's vivid stories bring his message home to anyone interested in improving the way American society works. This publication of Harvard Business Press can be ordered at amazon.com, borders.com, or barnesandnoble.com.

Caring for an ailing spouse may prolong your life. Stephanie Brown explains her research in a vodcast, featured on the University of Michigan website:  http://www.ns.umich.edu/podcast/vodcast.php. This vodcast was, appropriately, the university's home page lead for the week of Thanksgiving.

A study by CBSSM researcher Michael Volk, MD, and former CBSSM Director Peter Ubel, MD, has found that the Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD) organ allocation system has changed how high-risk organs are used--patients lower on the waiting list are receiving more high-risk or poor-quality organs, which has reduced post-transplant survival rates.  Dr. Volk and his colleagues are interested in finding ways to provide better decision making tools for patients who need organ transplants.
To read more about this study, please visit http://www2.med.umich.edu/prmc/media/newsroom/details.cfm?ID=807
Their findings are published in the November issue of Gastroenterology (Vol. 135, No. 5)

 The University of Michigan's Center of Excellence in Cancer Communications Research has been renewed for another five years, through August 2013, by the National Institutes of Health. The purpose of the $8.8 million award is to develop an efficient, theory-driven model for generating health behavior interventions that is generalizable across health behaviors and sociodemographic populations. The UM Center for Health Communicaitons Research, under principal investigator Victor Strecher, MPH, PhD, coordinates the core of this Center of Excellence. Former CBSSM Director Peter A. Ubel, MD, and current CBSSM Co-director Angela Fagerlin, PhD, are leading Project 3, in which they will conduct Internet studies to test several movel ways of tailoring a prostate cancer decision aid, with the goal of identifying interventions that increase the perceived salience of patient preferences. After they have determined the best interventions, they will modify the current prostate cancer decision aid and then test it in men with newly diagnosed localized prostate cancer. Co-investigators on Project 3 are John T. Wei, MD, and Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD, at the University of Michigan and James Tulsky, MD, and Stewart Alexander, PhD, at Duke University.

Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD, a CBSSM investigator and Director of the CBSSM Internet Survey lab, is the principal investigator on an Investigator Initiated Research award from the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making that began in October 2008.  The grant, entitled "Learning by Doing: Improving Risk Communication Through Active Processing of Interactive Pictographs," will fund the development and testing of of Flash-based interactive risk graphics that research participants or patients can use to visually demonstrate how likely they believe some event is to occur. Dr. Zikmund-Fisher hopes that people who create risk graphics themselves will have a better intuitive understanding of risk than people who just view static images. Co-investigators on the award include Angela Fagerlin, Peter A. Ubel, and Amanda Dillard.

New medications offer promise to millions of Americans diagnosed with cancer each year. Yet many of these new drugs are expensive; a single medication regimen can cost upwards of $50,000 per person per year on top of other medical expenses. Our society is struggling to find ways to target resources for such technologies. Peter A. Ubel, MD,and colleague Peter J. Neumann, MD (Tufts Medical Center) have been funded by the California Health Care Foundation to conduct a national survey of oncologists about new cancer therapies. Assisting with the project is CBSSM research staff member Julie Tobi.

In early April 2008, CBSSM welcomed its first doctoral fellow, Teresa Gavaruzzi. Ms. Gavaruzzi holds degrees in cognitive psychology and experimental psychology and is currently a doctoral student in cognitive psychology at the University of Padua in Italy. Under the mentorship of Angela Fagerlin, PhD, Teresa is participating especially in CBDSM research groups related to patient decision making. For her doctoral dissertation, she’s examining factors affecting the perception and understanding of risks in medical choices and the implications for informed consent, especially in screening for colorectal cancer and prostate cancer. An important part of her work is studying the effects of message framing and format on behaviors.

Former CBSSM faculty member Dylan Smith, PhD, is the principal investigator on an NIH R-21 grant beginning in spring 2008. Dr. Smith will be measuring health-related quality of life in older adults with chronic illnesses, evaluating existing recall-based approaches against two new tools that are designed to be robust to memory biases. Co-investigators with Dr. Smith are Peter A. Ubel, Norbert Schwarz, and Susan Murphy.

The Regents of the University of Michigan have named Peter A. Ubel, MD, the George Dock Collegiate Professor of Internal Medicine, effective December 13, 2007, through August 31, 2012. Collegiate professorships recognize faculty members whose work is of the highest quality. The titles honor prominent faculty members—in this case, Dr. George Dock (1860-1951), a professor at the University of Michigan Medical School.

CBSSM researcher Brian J. Zikmund-Fisher, PhD, and collaborator Mick Couper, PhD, from the UM Institute for Social Research spoke to the Medical Editors’ Meeting of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Drs. Couper and Zikmund-Fisher reported on "Methods and Early Results from the National Survey of Medical Decisions." This pioneering survey reveals surprising information about the epidemiology of ten common medical decisions that are made by older Americans. Discussion of the presentation was lively!

The Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, which funded this CBSSM research, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to assuring that people understand their choices and have the information they need to make sound decisions affecting their health and well being.
Learn more at www.fimdm.org

Amanda Dillard, PhD, was awarded a $25,000 George Bennett Postdoctoral Grant by the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. With this funding, Dr. Dillard will conduct surveys to examine whether certain types of patient testimonials have a beneficial influence on knowledge, satisfaction, and interest in shared health care decision making, specifically in the context of a decision aid related to colon cancer screening. She will use social cognitive theory, social comparison theory, and risk processing perspectives to guide her hypotheses about testimonials.

Dr. Dillard’s postdoctoral position at CBSSM was funded by VA Health Services Research and Development, Ann Arbor, Michigan.