Newsroom

George Bennett Dissertation Fellowships

For Immediate Release:

June 1, 2006

Contact:
Vicky Jaffe, Manning Selvage & Lee, 617-937-2578, Vicky.jaffe@mslpr.com or Lyn Paget, Foundation For Informed Medical Decision-Making, 617- 367-2000, X 243

The Foundation for Informed Medical Decision-Making has announced four $25,000 winners of this year’s George Bennett Dissertation Fellowships, which support research that advances the field of shared decision-making in medical care. The Foundation’s goal – through its support of shared decision-making – is to assure that people understand their choices and have the information they need to make sound decisions affecting their health and well-being. The Foundation believes that no one medical answer is right for all people and the decision that will best serve a particular patient often depends critically on the patient's own preferences and values.

“Ideally, the patient and his or her doctor are partners in medical decision-making,” said Jack Fowler, president of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. “The work that this year’s fellowship winners are undertaking will help future patients make better, more informed choices connected to their individual values.”

Award-winner Melissa Constantine, an Ipswich, MA native, 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. Constantine completed her undergraduate work at the University of Massachusetts in Boston with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Science, Technology & Values.

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. She is originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba where she graduated from Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate High School. 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. Price completed her undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Communications, followed by her Masters in Health Policy & Management at Harvard School of Public Health.

Mary Ann Murray is on the Health Sciences faculty at the University of Ottawa’s School of Nursing. She is originally from Ottawa where she graduated from Sir John MacDonald High School. 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. Murray has a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Nursing from the University of Ottawa.

Daniel Menchik is pursuing his doctorate at the University of Chicago’s Department of Sociology. Originally from Okemos, Michigan, where he graduated from Okemos High School, 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. Menchik also graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison with a Bachelors Degree in Political Science and Journalism. He then earned his Masters in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a Masters in Sociology from the University of Chicago.

The George Bennett Dissertation Fellowship program supports 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. Applicants must have completed all required coursework toward the doctorate. The dissertation proposal must have been approved by the time of funding. Each award will provide $25,000 to be paid through each fellow's school. Fellows may use stipends to cover living expenses, travel, tuition support, or research expenses.

For more information, visit www.fimdm.org.