Society for Medical Decision Making

About this course:
This course presents innovative approaches to engaging patients and other stakeholders around issues that are important to them, particularly those historically excluded from planning and decision-making. Building from an introduction to fuzzy cognitive maps as tools to support meaningful stakeholder engagement, this course will demonstrate how these approaches advance evidence-based and community-informed decision-making.

Each workshop objective will begin by sharing relevant theoretical and methodological foundations, followed by practice examples from our experience applying these methods in over 11 countries and 19 projects.

Learning Objectives:
1) Introducing the theory and practice of fuzzy cognitive maps
Participants will learn how to represent patient and stakeholder knowledge as fuzzy cognitive maps; they will work in small groups to generate their own fuzzy cognitive maps

2) Analyzing fuzzy cognitive maps
Participants will be guided through analytical approaches to identify interdependencies within maps, comparing and combining between stakeholders, with examples of how findings can contribute to common research processes (e.g., protocol and instrument development, priority setting, theories of change, impact assessment)

3) Contextualizing evidence in patient and stakeholder perspectives
Participants will learn several approaches to contextualize different forms of evidence in stakeholder perspectives and discuss implications for evidence-based decision-making

4) Moving towards patient and community-centered decision making:
Participants will learn how the use of fuzzy cognitive maps has contributed to evidence-informed and community-led decision making, based on examples from the field

Date: Mar 23, 2023

Time: 09:00 - 12:30 Pacific Time (US and Canada)

          12:00 - 15:30 EDT

          17:00 - 20:30 CET

Registration fees: 

Regular Member: $280       

Non-Member: $425

Trainee: $150

LMIC: $150

Emeritus: $150

REGISTER HERE

Speakers

Anna Dion
PhD @McGill University

Anna has over fifteen years’ experience building more accessible and inclusive health and social systems to meet the reproductive, perinatal, and early parenting needs of under-served families in Canada and internationally. She recently completed a PhD in Family Medicine and Primary Care at McGill University focused on strengthening community voice in adolescent reproductive health services and currently provides evidence support to the health system transformation in Ontario (Canada). She provides collaborative decision-making support as part of organizational change, leads a provincial community of practice for patient, family and caregiver engagement and partnership and provides evidence support to guide the current health system reform. She holds advanced degrees in engineering, public health and primary care.

Iván Sarmiento
Researcher @McGill University

Iván Sarmiento is a Colombian researcher with extensive experience working with indigenous communities. In his doctoral research, he has used fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) to facilitate intercultural dialogue with indigenous communities in Mexico. Ivan is the program administrator of Participatory Research at McGill (PRAM) and has advised the application of FCM with diverse populations in Canada, Guatemala, Colombia, Nigeria, Uganda and Botswana. His current work uses FCM to engage participants in identifying actions to promote cultural safety in clinical settings and to reduce structural racism.

Neil Andersson

Professor @McGill University's Department of Family Medicine

Neil Andersson is a full professor at McGill University's Department of Family Medicine. His main focus is on method development for large-scale participatory approaches. He is particularly concerned about reproducible techniques to build stakeholder voices into systematic reviews, research conceptualisation and co-design, intervention development, implementation and analysis. Dr Andersson has led the application of fuzzy cognitive mapping in eight countries with over 20 community-based research projects.