HANDBOOK OF HEALTH DECISION SCIENCE

1. What Are Values, Utilities, and Preferences? A Clarification in the Context of Decision Making in Health Care, and an Exploration of Measurement Issues
2. Decision Architectures
3. Modeling Medical Decisions
4. From Laboratory to Clinic and Back: Connecting Neuroeconomic and Clinical Measures of Decision-Making Dysfunctions
5. Research Methods for Health Decision Making
6. A Fuzzy-Trace Theory of Judgment and Decision-Making in Health Care: Explanation, Prediction, and Application
7. Cognitive Mechanisms and Common-Sense Management of Cancer Risk: Do Patients Make Decisions?
8. The Influence of Affect on Health Decisions
9. Strategies to Promote the Maintenance of Behavior Change: Moving from Theoretical Principles to Practice
10. Uncertainty and Ambiguity in Health Decisions
11. Adult Age Differences in Health-Related Decision-Making: A Primer
12. Decision-Making in Adolescents and Young Adults
13. Decision Making in the Family
14. Shared Decision-Making and the Patient-Provider Relationship
15. Legal Aspects of Healthcare Decision-Making
16. Decision Tools for HealthCare Professionals
17. Using the Veterans Health Administration as a Laboratory for Integrated Decision Tools for Patients and Clinicians
18. Tailored Communications for Health-Related Decision-Making and Behavior Change
19. Overcoming the Many Pitfalls of Communicating Risk
20. Decision Aids: Do They Work?
21. The Promise and Perils of Shared Decision-Making in Clinical Practice
22. Evidence-Based Medicine and Decision-Making Policy
23. Introduction: Transformations in Health Care Delivery and Financing
24. The Internet, Social Media, and Health Decision-Making
25. Decision-Making in the Age of Whole Genome Sequencing

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

Features
• Provides a comprehensive examination of health care decision making from theoretical and applied perspectives
• Encompasses decision making from the individual to the societal level, including important health-related decisions outside the clinical setting
• Offers a unique translational approach to health decision making, taking theory to practice
• Applies a multilevel framework to decision making in the health care setting
• Incorporates a transdisciplinary approach to the study and practice of decision making, including social, behavioral, medical, economic, policy, and practice perspectives

Authors
• 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.