The Risky Business of Risk Communication

Rhode Island Hospital, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

The goals of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) are to improve the health of individuals and shape health policy by advancing systematic methods to deal with the inherent uncertainty of health care decisions. The Annual Meeting serves the centerpiece of collaboration between the Society's members, who represent academia, clinicians, industry, government, as well as policy-makers. The Meeting, to be held October 21st-24th in San Francisco, provides a forum for the presentation of current that identifies specific topics warranting future research, describes methodologic advances, and presents results from the application of decision analysis, meta-analysis, disease simulation, cognitive psychology, utility elicitation, cost-effectiveness analyses, and informatics applications, among other methods employed by the membership. The 2005 Annual Meeting will incorporate the theme "Translating Medical Decision Making Research Into Practice" in 2 special symposia, "Translating Research Into Practice: Setting a Research Agenda for Clinical Decision Tools in Cancer Prevention, Early Detection, and Treatment" and "The Risky Business of Risk Communication" as well as the keynote speaker and short course offerings. In this application, we seek support for 1 symposium, "The Risky Business of Risk Communication," and 4 short courses. The aim of these related activities is to streamline the dissemination of our members' work to increase its impact on policy makers, individual clinicians, patients and the public at large. We will achieve this aim by providing expert discussion of, and instruction in, more effective visual display of quantitative information, utilization of the narrative, or storytelling, as a catalyst to understanding to understanding complex data, and comprehension of both the individual's and society's interpretation of risk, and how that interpretation affects both behavior and decision making. This conference aims to improve the future research presentation of attendees by first, by better understanding how audience interpretation of data may affect behavior , second, establishing an emotional attachment through effective narration, and finally, capitalizing on that attachment with clearly presented data. This will lead to improved dissemination of health services research, which will in turn, further routinize evidence based clinical practice, ultimately leading to more efficient provision of care that is both high in quality and value.