George Bennett Dissertation Fellowships

The Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making funds a fellowship program to support dissertation research in shared medical decision-making. The grants are designed to support basic and applied research that can advance the field, and to attract scholars to the field of shared decision-making in medical care. Current award recipients include:

Jared R. Adams is earning his M.D. Ph.D. in the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Dartmouth Medical School, researching shared decision making for patients with severe and persistent mental illness. His research will assess the decision-making needs of people with severe mental illness and their clinicians and create a model decision aid that meets the local needs of clients and clinicians. (Awarded September 2005)

Melissa Constantine is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, Division of Health Services Research & Policy. Her dissertation, “The Effect of Institutionalization of Medical Care on Quality of Patient’s Informed Consent,” evaluates how well-informed a patient is before given the Quad Test, which is administered to pregnant women to determine if there are chromosomal abnormalities. Ms. Constantine is working to determine the association between the process of obtaining informed consent and the three elements of informed consent: intentionality, understanding and freedom from a controlling influence. (Awarded September 2006)

Rebecca Anhang Price is a Health Policy Ph.D. candidate on the Medical Sociology track at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Her research assesses the effects of a direct-to-consumer advertising campaign for a cervical cancer screening test. It will evaluate the association between campaign exposure and decision-making processes, patient satisfaction and the clinical appropriateness of test use. (Awarded September 2006)

Mary Ann Murray is on the Health Sciences faculty at the University of Ottawa’s School of Nursing. Her dissertation is “Efficacy of a Training Intervention on the Quality of Nurses’ Decision Support for Patients Deciding About the Place of Care at the End of Life: A randomized Control Trial.” The aim of this project is to determine whether the quality of nurses’ decision support can be improved with a theory-based skills building intervention. (Awarded September 2006)

Daniel Menchik is pursuing his doctorate at the University of Chicago’s Department of Sociology. Mr. Menchik’s research will try to identify the strategies used by patients that enable successful input into their treatments and indicate the conditions under which physician decisions are influenced by colleagues or scientific research. (Awarded September 2006)