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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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)