Handbook of Health Decision Science

This comprehensive reference delves into the complex process of medical decision making—both the nuts-and-bolts access and insurance issues that guide choices and the cognitive and affective factors that can make patients decide against their best interests. Wide-ranging coverage offers a robust evidence base for understanding decision making across the lifespan, among family members, in the context of evolving healthcare systems, and in the face of life-changing diagnosis. The section on applied decision making reviews the effectiveness of decision-making tools in healthcare, featuring real-world examples and guidelines for tailored communications with patients. Throughout, contributors spotlight the practical importance of the field and the pressing need to strengthen health decision-making skills on both sides of the clinician/client dyad.

 

Among the Handbook’s topics:

 

• From laboratory to clinic and back: connecting neuroeconomic and clinical measures of decision-making dysfunctions.
• Strategies to promote the maintenance of behavior change: moving from theoretical principles to practices.
• Shared decision making and the patient-provider relationship. Overcoming the many pitfalls of communicating risk.
• Evidence-based medicine and decision-making policy.
• The internet, social media, and health decision making.

 

The Handbook of Decision Science will interest a wide span of professionals, among them health and clinical psychologists, behavioral researchers, health policymakers, and sociologists.

Michael A. Diefenbach, Ph.D., is an associate professor of urology and oncological sciences at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He is a social/health psychologist and the director of the behavioral research program at the Department of Urology at Mount Sinai. Dr. Diefenbach’s research has two foci. He is interested in the basic cognitive and affective processes that determine health decision making, with a particular emphasis on the assessment of illness representations and the affective sequelae of a cancer health threat. Suzanne M. Miller, Ph.D. is a Senior Member at Fox Chase Cancer Center, where she is Director of the Behavioral Medicine Program, the Behavioral Research Core Facility, and the Behavioral Center of Excellence in Breast Cancer. As a clinical/health psychologist, Dr. Miller has been interested in the interface of psychology and medicine, extending basic constructs in cognitive and social science to the domain of behavioral oncology. Her funded research – through the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the Department of Defense -- centers on the cognitive-affective processing of threatening health information and the implications for the design and assessment of interventions to facilitate decision making, adjustment, and adherence, with a special focus on genetic conditions, special populations, and individual family development. Deborah J. Bowen, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health. She is also an adjunct full member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and was the head of the Social/Behavioral Sciences Affinity Group, within the Cancer Prevention Research Program. Her research interests include both community and individual interventions to prevent cancer and cancer mortality.