EDITOR’S NOTE

By Helen Colby, PhD, Editor-In-Chief

It was great to see everyone who came to SMDM’s Annual Meeting in Boston in October! Amber Barnato and Jagpreet Chhatwal did a great job organizing an excellent event. There were so many great topics I won’t start to list them here, but I do want to give a warm shout out to everyone who participated in the poster sessions, especially to everyone who presented during the Lusted finalists session. There is an extraordinary amount of amazing work being done by SMDM members and it was great to get a look at so much of it.

In this edition of the newsletter, SMDM’s new President Victoria Shaffer outlines some of the changes coming in 2025 including bidding farewell to Executive Director Diane Nickolson, and the moving of the Annual Meeting from October to June.

Other items of interest in this edition of the newsletter include:

• Jenny Spencer and Alistair Thorpe share the results of last quarter’s poll on social media use among SMDM members.
• The deadline for submissions to the 2025 annual conference is just around the corner (15 January!), and David Hutton and Brian Zikmund-Fisher provide a preview of what we can expect at that meeting and some of the delights Ann Arbor has to offer.
• Looking even further ahead, Emily Burger and Torbjøn Wisløff introduce some of the attractions we can look forward to at the 2026 annual meeting in Oslo.
• We at SMDM talk often about shared decision making, but rarely about what defines it. Frank Gavin, a member of SMDM’s Patient Advisory Council shares a thoughtful piece on this topic that is definitely worth a read.
• At the Boston conference the Enthusiast Fund was introduced which allowed us to upvote our favorite MDM topics while raising money to support the society. Emily Burger provides the results of those votes.
• The new Open Source Models Special Interest Group has had its first meeting, and Renee Arnold provides a summary and additional information about the group.

And lastly you can find introductions to the new board members, a list of 2024 volunteers, and the 2024 award and prize winners as well as upcoming SMDM events and tutorials. I hope everyone has a safe, happy new year, and don’t forget to submit to SMDM 2025!

By Victoria Shaffer, PhD, President

2025 will bring several new changes for our society. Our Executive Director, Diane Nickolson, will be stepping down from her position with SMDM effective 31 December 2024. Over the past four years, Diane has guided the Society for Medical Decision Making through significant challenges and changes, including navigating the global pandemic, expanding virtual education opportunities, and reimagining our annual meeting in new locations. She has played an important role in fostering stability and progress during a time of membership fluctuations and evolving management partnerships. We are grateful to Diane for her service to SMDM. Please join us in wishing her all the best in her next endeavors.

Diane’s departure provided an opportunity to look critically at the role of the Executive Director in SMDM within the context of our current fiscal constraints. After careful and thoughtful consideration, the SMDM Board of Trustees has decided that the Society will move forward without an Executive Director at this time. This decision is made with confidence in the strong foundation Diane helped build, the expertise of our management company—ADG, and the strong commitment of our Executive Committee. We believe this approach will best serve the Society in the coming year, and the Board will revisit this decision later this year.

Our annual meeting will move from October to June. This means that there will be less than 8 months between the 2024 and 2025 annual meetings. The move is largely dictated by the fact that we have chosen to move our conferences from hotels, which have grown increasingly cost prohibitive, to academic institutions. The June timeframe will allow for greater access to campuses and less expensive accommodations at many locations. In 2025, we have the privilege of holding our meeting at the University of Michigan located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The 2025 co-chairs, David Hutton and Brian Zikmund-Fisher, have some unique events planned. Please check out their newsletter article, which summarizes many of the key features of next year’s meeting. As I hope you have heard across several channels by now, our call for abstracts for the 2025 meeting is already open. The submission portal will remain open through 15 January 2025.

With the change in timing of our Annual Meetings, we will also be modifying our Business Meeting that is typically held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting. In our bylaws, the terms of our leadership roles begin and end in October, with the passing of the gavel at the Business Meeting. We will continue to hold a Business Meeting in October, although the meeting will now be virtual, and all SMDM members will be encouraged to attend. This will be a traditional Business Meeting where reports will be given from the President and the Secretary-Treasurer. In addition, we will acknowledge the outgoing Board members, recognize the incoming Board members, and do a virtual passing of the gavel ceremony to the incoming President. This approach will allow us to provide a more comprehensive year-to-date assessment of our financial status, as the expenses and income from the Annual Meeting should be largely realized by this point in time. We will also continue to hold an in person Business Meeting at the conference in June that will be open to all. At this meeting, there will be reports from the President and the Editor-in-Chief of the journals, and we will have additional time to hear about other SMDM initiatives in reports from Board Members or Co-Chairs.

Finally, our contract with SAGE, the publisher of Medical Decision Making and Medical Decision Making Policy & Practice, ends in 2026. Next year, we will begin the process of evaluating our current publishing contract and deciding whether to pursue a renewal with SAGE or seek prospectuses from other publishing companies. This process will take about two years, and we will hire a consultant to help us navigate the current publication market for academic journals. Given the magnitude of changes to the publishing industry in the last five years, it is likely that there will be significant changes to the operations of the Society’s journals. We will continue to update SMDM members on the process at the Business Meetings and via the newsletter throughout 2025 and 2026.

I hope you all have a happy and healthy holiday season!

Victoria Shaffer

SMDM President

By Jenny Spencer, PhD & Alistair Thorpe, PhD SMDM Digital Communications Committee Chairs

As Twitter transformed to X and lost much of its free functionality in favor of a payment-based model, many have found the sense of academic community once provided by the site has diminished. For those of us on the digital communications side, it is clear that the once active SMDM community is smaller and harder to engage with. To better understand the current landscape of social media use for the SMDM membership, we sent a brief survey out with the September newsletter. Although only 12 members responded to the survey, their insights, along with numerous conversations at this year’s annual meeting, provided a few important take-aways on future directions.  

Most respondents do report using some kind of social media platform to stay up to date with their professional networks, with 58% using LinkedIn, 42% using Twitter, 17% using Bluesky, and 17% not using any platforms. Respondents who follow SMDM found these platforms most helpful for news – such as upcoming webinars, annual meeting updates, and general SMDM updates and for identifying educational resources. The value of current formats for keeping up to date on relevant research, job opportunities, and achievements of other SMDM members were not rated as highly. Looking forward – respondents were interested in member spotlights and more infographics or other visually engaging posts (compared to polls or other types of content).

Our next steps on the social media team are to establish and grow the SMDM presence on Bluesky, which seems to be where many of those leaving Twitter have decided to relocate. For those of you already on Bluesky- we will hope to start with some member spotlights to help rebuild the digital SMDM community. We hope to continue being a valuable source for updates on webinars, meetings, and other events and to increase our utility as a source for information relevant to our members’ research and professional development as well.

By David W. Hutton, PhD and Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD, Co-Chairs of the 2025 Annual Meeting

We’re excited for you to attend the 2025 annual meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan this upcoming 15-18 June 2025. In addition to being at a new time (summer!) and place, this meeting will have some exciting new changes.

The meeting theme is “Principled Practice: Integrating Ethics into Medical Decision Making”, and we look forward to seeing a wide range of short courses, plenary sessions, scientific talks, and scientific posters that touch upon this theme.

In addition, you may have seen that we are devoting the Wednesday morning sessions to promote dialogue between clinicians and research scientists. We hope to facilitate conversations on a wide range of topics such as how to incorporate ethics into patient communication and ethics related to MDM in policy. Please look especially at the new Call for Clinician Crosstalk Working Group participants. We are asking for applications from people interested in working in small groups (which we will assemble) to create crosstalk-focused sessions representing diverse perspectives. All are encouraged to apply, and we hope to put together some excited and engaged teams to create really innovative sessions!

We also strongly encourage you to join us in Ann Arbor. A small city that boasts the restaurants and culture of a much larger metropolis, Ann Arbor is a beautiful place, particularly in the summer. We will have the opportunity to have our social event at the University of Michigan stadium, the largest in the nation, and attendees will even be able to run on the field themselves. Because we are on a university campus, we also have several new lodging options at a variety of price points: walking-distance hotels, hotels a 10 minute ride away (we’re working on shuttle busses), and walking distance dorm rooms. And, don’t worry, Ann Arbor is only a half-hour drive from the Detroit airport (a Delta hub), where there are plenty of convenient flights both domestically and internationally.

We are really looking forward to seeing you here in June! In the meantime, please don’t forget to submit your abstracts, short courses, and/or symposium proposals by 15 January 2025.

By Emily Burger, PhD, and Torbjøn Wisløff, MSc, PhD; Co-Chairs of the 2026 Annual Meeting

Hello, SMDM members! As your co-chairs for the 2026 Annual SMDM meeting in Oslo, Norway, we’re excited to invite you to the vibrant city of Oslo, hosted at the University of Oslo from 28 June to 1 July. Going forward, we’ll use SMDM’s newsletter to introduce you to our city. Get ready to experience a city that blends natural beauty with a cutting-edge urban scene. Oslo is a pioneer in green living and digital innovation, echoing our drive to make healthcare decisions smarter and more sustainable. Did you know that Norway boasts one of the world’s highest coffee consumptions per capita? It might be the perfect place for us to fuel our discussions over a steaming cup while admiring vistas of fjords and forests.

Oslo isn’t just a feast for thinkers; it’s a playground for the curious. Dive into the city’s rich history at sites like the Akershus Fortress or the Nobel Peace Center. Discover how the city’s fusion of past and future reflects our own journey in medical decision-making as we transform data into life-enhancing strategies. Fancy some adventure? Explore the great outdoors with a hike in the Nordmarka or a sail on the beautiful Oslofjord. As we gather in this exciting city, let’s harness Oslo’s spirit of innovation and community to spark fresh ideas and enduring connections.

Here’s to learning, exploring, and making a little history ourselves in this dynamic Scandinavian capital!

On the planning front, we are working on our theme. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have ideas!

Let the countdown to Oslo begin!

By Frank Gavin, member of SMDM Patient Advisory Council

After three years as a member of SMDM’s Patient Advisory Council (PAC) and thirty years of involvement (as a patient, parent, and member of the public) in healthcare and health research, I find one term much used within healthcare circles and especially within SMDM especially slippery: shared decision-making.

In 2022 the PAC selected a few dozen terms to be included in a glossary (now on the SMDM website) that we hoped would be useful for researchers, patients, and other interested members of the public.

Here’s the entry for shared decision-making: “A process of engaging patients/caregivers through sharing clinical evidence using clear, understandable language, acknowledging uncertainty about options, exploring patients’ preferences, and communicating to patients as partners as they make health care choices.”

I wish I had called out “Wait a second; there are some big problems with this definition!” But something—perhaps being new to the Society–made me bite my tongue. I hope it’s not too late, now that I’m about to complete my term on the PAC, to point out how disconcertingly one-directional the described process is: it’s initiated by professionals, and all the actions the sharing, using, acknowledging, exploring, and communicating—are performed by professionals. Yet at the very end, patients make important choices all by themselves. It’s hard to see how these decisions can be called shared ones.

Happily, the actual process of making healthcare decisions is almost always much messier than the definition above suggests. Patients and caregivers, together or separately, when they’re on the same page or at odds with one another, often do the original reaching out, sometimes question professionals’ preferences, investigate or pursue options, and seek relationships with professionals grounded in reciprocity, with neither party always in the lead. And, of course, sometimes patients and professionals disagree in ways that involve lots of sharing but that don’t result in a shared decision. The definition seems not to recognize this possibility, though it is not uncommon.

The definition also doesn’t touch upon the question of how much patients and caregivers have to contribute to make decisions shared ones. To some, the term suggests that everyone contributes roughly equally to the final decision, but it is sometimes very hard for a patient or a caregiver to know the degree to which he or she is making a deliberate and informed choice or largely “going along with” the recommendation of a clinician who may indeed be fully committed in principle to shared decision- making but who is also very confident and powerfully persuasive. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has looked back years later on medical decisions I made—or thought I had made–and wondered what made me think my share of the decision was more than minimal. Sometimes much becomes clearer with the passage of time.

Finally, the definition of shared decision-making that sits on the website doesn’t hint at the reality of power, including power imbalances. To ask that it do so is probably unreasonable given the requirement that it be brief. But in the light of all we know about inequities, thinking seriously about shared decision-making in healthcare would seem to require keeping matters of power in clear sight.

Researchers, in my experience, are quite drawn to tidiness, but work on shared decision making calls for, even demands, a healthy appetite for all that makes decisions on the ground anything but tidy.

By Emily Burger, PhD, SMDM Development Committee Member



Hello SMDM Members! We’re excited to share the results of our Enthusiast Fund donation program, which made its debut at the 46th Annual Meeting in Boston. Attendees showed their support—and their philanthropic flair—by donating to vote for their top 5 favorite scientific sessions. The results were nail-biting, with a three-way tie for first place:

• Bridging Evidence Gaps: Leveraging Mathematical Modeling for Estimating Mortality Benefits of Cancer Screening Test
• Race, Culture and Worldviews
• Decision Sciences and Marginalized Communities

Hot on their heels, Sendhil Mullainathan’s captivating Keynote address secured a close second.

A heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed; your spirited participation fuels the passion of SMDM! We are eagerly looking forward to fully launching the Enthusiast Fund at the 47th Annual Meeting in Michigan. So, get ready to vote and make your voices heard once more!

By Renee Arnold, PharmD, RPh

The inaugural meeting of the newly established Open Source Models (OSMs) Special Interest Group held at the recent SMDM Annual Meeting in Boston was a resounding success, in person and on Zoom. We are excited to engage in publications, webinars, tutorials, journal clubs, fora, short courses, and other methodologies of supporting OSMs as de facto best practices in modeling. The high attendance and engaging discussions demonstrated the strong interest and potential for this SIG.

One of the key projects we discussed was the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant that my small company just received (official award is 1 December 2024 – 30 November 30 2025) from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute to create an Open Source Models (OSM) platform. SMDM has generously agreed to host the platform and I look forward to sharing our progress throughout the year and to receiving your continuing input. Your ideas and contributions regarding this initiative have already been invaluable, and we anticipate this will be a significant focus for our SIG’s collaborative efforts.

If you have any questions or ideas you’d like to discuss, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Let’s work together to make a significant impact in the world of medical decision making through open source modeling. Thank you for your enthusiasm and commitment to this important work!

The Society for Medical Decision Making is pleased to announce the outcome of the recent election for 2024 – 2025 Officers and Trustees. Please join us in welcoming the following members to the Board:

OFFICERS:

President – Elect

Beate Jahn, PhD

Austria

Vice President – Elect

Ellen G. Engelhardt, PhD

The Netherlands

Secretary-Treasurer-Elect

Torbjørn Wisløff, PhD

Norway

TRUSTEES:

Hawre Jalal, MD, PhD

Canada

Kine Pedersen, PhD

Norway

Ryan Suk, PhD

United States of America

Thank you to our outgoing board members:

Alan Schwartz, PhD, President (United States)

Victoria Shaffer, PhD, President Elect (United States)

Beate Sander, PhD, Past President (Canada)

Ankur Pandya, PhD, Vice President (United States)

Ellen Lipstein, MD, MPH, Vice President Elect (United States)

Scott LaJoie, PhD, Secretary Treasurer (United States)

Scott Cantor, PhD, Historian (United States)

Emily Burger, PhD, Trustee (Norway)

Ellen Englehardt, PhD, Trustee (Netherlands)

Rowan Iskandar, PhD, MA, Trustee (Switzerland)

Natalia Kunst, PhD, Trustee (United Kingdom)

Aisha Langford, PhD, Trustee (United States)

Daniel D Matlock, MD, Trustee (United States)

Kathryn Martinez, PhD, MPH, Trustee (United States)

Channing Tate, PhD, Trustee (United States)

Laura Scherer, PhD, Trustee (United States)

Brian Zikmund-Fisher, PhD, Editor Journal, ex-officio (United States)

Helen Colby, PhD, Editor newsletter ex-officio (United States)

SMDM Career Achievement Award

John B. Wong, MD

SMDM Distinguished Service Award

Heather Gold, PhD

John M. Eisenberg Award for Practical Application

Ahmed Bayoumi, MD, MSC

International Young Scholar Award in Honor of Murray Krahn

James Avoka Asamani

The SMDM Sandy Schwartz Young Scholar Award

Stijntje Dijk

SMDM Outstanding Paper by a Young Investigator

George Goshua, MD, MSc, FACP

“Distributional cost-effectiveness of equity-enhancing gene therapy in sickle cell disease in the United States.” Ann Intern Med. 2023; 176(6):779-787.

Lee B. Lusted Student Prize Competition:

Milt Weinstein Award for Outstanding Presentation in Applied Health Economics

• Mert Sahinkoc

“Can Blood-Based Biomarkers Replace Ultrasound for Routine Hepatocellular Carcinoma Surveillance? A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis“

• Sam Hirniak

“Cost-effectiveness of Efanesoctocog Alfa (EA) Prophylaxis in People with Hemophilia A”

Margaret Holmes-Rovner Award for Outstanding Presentation in Decision Psychology and Shared Decision Making

• Vanessa Orellana Villazon

“Unlocking Potential: A Scoping Review of Shared Decision Making Training in Pediatrics”

• Brooke Honzel

“Classifying and Quantifying Medical Jargon Use in Prognostication Clinician-Family Meetings for Critically Ill Neurologic Patients”

Bruce Schackman Award for Outstanding Presentation in Health Services, Outcomes, and Policy Research

• Eliza Ennis

“HCV, HIV, and Overdose Mortality in Large Urban Settings: Modelling Effectiveness of Supervised Injection Facilities”

• Sara Khor

“The Health Disparity Impact of Omitting Race from Cancer Risk Prediction: A Microsimulation Study”

Anne Stiggelbout Award for Outstanding Presentation in Patient and Stakeholder Preferences and Engagement

• Nicolas Iragorri

“Society Values for Health Inequality Aversion in Canada – A Benefit Trade-off Analysis”

• Amy Cole

“Participatory Engagement and Concept Mapping to Develop a Values-Clarification Tool for Adults with Advanced Cancers”

Stephen Pauker Award for Outstanding Presentation

• Gary Qian

“Enhancing Clinical Trial Design under Hierarchical Uncertainty through Hybrid Recruitment Strategies”

• Muhammad Maaz

“Exact Multi-way Sensitivity Analysis in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis via Algebraic Geometry”

UPCOMING EDUCATION TUTORIAL WEBINAR

Accounting for parameter uncertainty in value sets for multi-attribute utility instruments: a tutorial on using the multiply imputed EQ-5D-5L value set

– 14 January 2025

09.00-10.30 (PST) | 12.00 – 13.30 (EST) | 17.00 – 18.30 (UTC) | 18.00 – 19.30 (CET)

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