Society for Medical Decision Making

Elections for the 2026 Nominating Committee members will take place online at the Business Meeting on 20 October, 2025 at 11 am ET. Please register for the Business Meeting here, and review the candidates below. SMDM membership will elect 3 people to serve on the Nominating Committee for 2026.

Ashley A. Leech, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine whose work focuses on improving high-value care for people of reproductive age, including pregnant and postpartum individuals. She combines decision-analytic modeling with large-scale Medicaid and commercial claims to study the safety, effectiveness, adherence, access, and costs of pharmacotherapies across maternal and reproductive health, with emphasis on substance use disorders. As Associate Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Health Economic Modeling, she leads cost-effectiveness studies and trains ministries of health and other partners in health technology assessment. She previously served as PI on an NIH/NIDA K01 (DA050740; now completed) focused on advancing treatment outcomes for pregnant and postpartum individuals with OUD; this work was published in JAMA Pediatrics, a cost-effectiveness analysis intended to inform policy and clinical practice.

Ruth Ndjaboue, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Université de Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada) and holds the Canadian Research Chair in Inclusivity and Active Ageing. Dr Ndjaboue has a multidisciplinary background, including a post doctorate in knowledge translation and medical education, a PhD in Epidemiology (Université Laval, Canada), a master in Public Health with a major in epidemiology and biostatistics (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium), a master and a bachelor in Psychology (University of Yaounde I, Cameroon). The research interests of Dr Ndjaboue focus on developing knowledge synthesis and longitudinal analyses of the impact of diverse psychosocial factors on chronic disease and ageing management and care. She use interdisciplinary research methods, including   quantitative and qualitative methods, participatory approaches and technology-based tools.

Kine Pedersen, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Health Economic Evaluation at the University of Oslo. Her research focuses on evaluation of health policies and interventions, including model-based cost-effectiveness analyses and mixed-methods studies. Kine has been an SMDM member since 2014 and is currently a board member as an International Trustee.

Hadley Stevens Smith, PhD, MPSA, a health economist and a researcher of the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genomics. She is an Assistant Professor of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and a Faculty Member of the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics. Dr. Smith studies clinical, patient-centered, and economic outcomes of genomic medicine, primarily for newborn and pediatric patient populations. The goal of her research program is to inform efficient and ethical implementation of genomic technologies into clinical care. She serves on multiple national working groups to develop policy recommendations for newborn screening and diagnosis and is a Section Editor for Economics and Precision Medicine at Genetics in Medicine. An active member of SMDM since 2019, she has served twice as a social media reporter for the annual meeting, is a member of the Career Development Committee, and co-led the Grant Review and Networking for Trainees (GRANTs) seminar series in 2024. She was honored to be awarded the inaugural Sandy Schwartz SMDM Young Scholar Award in 2023.

Channing Tate, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor in General Internal Medicine and Geriatric Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (CU-AMC). She is an investigator in the Colorado
Program for Patient Center Decisions and the Adult and Child Center for Outcomes Research and Delivery Science (ACCORDS). Dr. Tate is also the inaugural recipient of the University of Colorado Cancer
Centers Rising Stars in Research Endowed Chair. Her research interests include working with historically underserved populations, health equity and justice, aging populations, hospice, end-of-life care transitions, cancer prevention and control, and shared decision-making. Dr. Tate has been an active SMDM member since 2013. In the time she served as the co-chair of the Career Development Committee, as a Trustee, and a member of the Awards Committee.

KD Valentine, PhD, is Research Staff at the Health Decision Sciences Center in the General Medicine Division at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on advancing shared decision making through rigorous measurement of decision quality, patient preferences, and patient–clinician communication. She is particularly interested in how patients interpret medical evidence and recommendations, and how these perceptions shape value-concordant care.

Dr. Valentine brings quantitative and methodological expertise to her work, holding a PhD in Quantitative Psychology from the University of Missouri, as well as a BS and MS in Psychology from Missouri State University. She has contributed to multiple AHRQ, NIH, PCORI, and foundation-funded projects developing and evaluating decision support tools across a range of clinical domains, including cardiovascular care, oncology, and geriatrics.

An active member of SMDM since 2016, she has held positions in the Decision Psychology Special Interest Group, has reviewed abstracts and judged Lusted Sessions, has been co-leading the core course Introduction to Decision Psychology for 7 years, and just this year became the co-Chair of the Shared Decision Making Special Interest Group, and. Dr. Valentine is committed to strengthening the Society’s diversity of thought, methodological excellence, and mentorship pipeline. She is enthusiastic about serving on the Nominating Committee to help identify and engage leaders who will sustain and advance the Society’s mission.

Reza Yaesoubi, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. He is a health decision scientist whose research focuses on developing and applying analytical methods to inform data-driven and value-based decisions in clinical care, public health, and global health. His primary area of expertise lies in guiding decisions when evidence and data evolve too rapidly for static policies or guidelines to suffice—for example, during outbreaks of novel pathogens or the spread of antimicrobial resistance. He is also interested in advancing the theoretical and methodological foundations of medical decision-making and health care resource allocation.

Dr. Yaesoubi serves as an Associate Editor for Health Care Management Science and as an Editorial Board Member for Medical Decision Making. He was the Scientific Review Co-Chair for the 2024 and 2025 annual meetings of the Society for Medical Decision Making.