Health Communication and Decision Making

A major theme of CBSSM involves using techniques from basic and applied research to determine the best practices for communicating health information to patients and the public more generally. This special interest group explores topics related to understanding and improving patient and public decision making about medical issues.

Research that falls within this programmatic area includes topics such as:

  • Risk communication and perception
  • Health communication and education
  • Development and testing of decision aids/patient education materials
  • Visualization and contextualization of health data
  • Communication of genomic information to patients and providers
  • Numeracy and literacy
  • Utility and survey methods
  • Patient decision making
  • Patient-physician communication