COMMITTEES

Committees are established by the SMDM Board of Trustees and continue from year to year until terminated by the Board. With the exception of the Education and Nominations Committees, leadership is chosen by the President-Elect of the Society.

Development Committee

The charge to the Development Committee is to develop and assess potential revenue-generating activities for the Society.

Education Committee

The charge to the Education Committee is to extend and improve knowledge of medical decision making principles throughout the health care community. The Committee's goal is to develop, implement, and evaluate systematic educational programs for its members and others. The Vice President and Vice President Elect of SMDM lead the Education Committee.

Finance Committee

The Committee, in cooperation with the Secretary-Treasurer, the Executive Director and the Administrative Director, is responsible for the maintenance of the Society's financial and business records.The Committee reviews and makes recommendations on proposed budgets for the ensuing year and monitors and makes recommendations to the Board about prudent investment of the Society's reserves and recommends strategies for the long-term financial planning.

Membership Committee

The charge to the Membership Committee is: 1) to design and implement membership campaigns, 2) to facilitate communication between members and SMDM, 3) to assist SMDM in promoting the annual meeting, and 4) to ensure SMDM databases are coordinated and utilized in ways that benefit the Society and its members.

Nominations Committee

The Nominations Committee consists of the immediate Past President (who serves as chairperson), the immediate past-chairperson of the Committee, and three members of the Society who are elected at the Annual Meeting in accordance with the Regulations of the Society. The Committee formulates a slate of candidates for each annual election. The slate includes at least two candidates for each position. Each candidate must have consented to serve if elected.

Policy Committee

The charge to the Policy Committee is to identify national and international policy issues relevant to the SMDM community and to facilitate SMDM having a voice regarding policy issues among decision-makers. The focus of the Policy Committee is 1) to support and advance funding for research and educational initiatives in the area of medical decision making and 2) to provide guidance to decision-makers on policy that is based on sound principles of medical decision making. Links to adopted statements can be found here SMDM Policy and Position Statements.

Publications Committee

The charge to the Publications Committee is to develop, implement and/or oversee the general policies of the Society with regard to its publications, including the journal, newsletter, website and social media outlets.

WORKING GROUPS

Working Groups are formed by the Board of Trustees and charged with a specific task. The Board may decide that a Working Group serves as an ad hoc committee that dissolves once the task is achieved, they may decide that the Working Group becomes a standing committee of the Society, or the group may remain a Working Group indefinitely.

Issues in Methodology Working Group

The Issues in Methodology Working Group solicits, prepares, and endorses high quality guidelines, and position papers on a variety of clinical, methodological, and policy topics of key relevance to the membership. The objective of this endeavor is for the Society to leverage the expertise of its members to develop a set of landmark position papers for submission to Medical Decision Making. Policy and Procedure for Developing SMDM Position Papers on Methods  

Global Health Working Group

The Global Health Policy Working Group seeks to build a community of global health policy researchers within SMDM that includes researchers from high, middle and low-income countries. Our current initiatives include increasing participation of middle and low-income country residents at SMDM annual meetings in North America and biennial meetings in Europe and creating opportunities for SMDM members interested in global health to share experiences and identify mentorship and collaboration opportunities.

Interest Groups are formed by Members of the Society with similar interests. Each group chooses a leader or co-leaders, who organize, set the agenda and lead in-person meetings during the annual meeting.

Clinical Research Integrity Interest Group
Rational medical decision making requires high quality, unbiased evidence about benefits and harms of clinical interventions. The Clinical Research Integrity Interest Group is focused on defending the integrity of the clinical evidence data base. There is increasing evidence that clinical research and its dissemination may be subject to manipulation or outright suppression. Furthermore, people attempting to blow the whistle on these practices have been subject to intimidation and coercion. Those responsible often are protecting their vested economic, political, or ideologic interests. The Clinical Research Integrity Interest Group will attempt to better define these problems through research, and better disseminate information about threats to clinical research integrity. Finally, we hope to develop tools to detect manipulated or suppressed research, educational programs about the problem, and policy approaches to discourage further manipulation or suppression. For more information, contact Roy Poses, MD. To be added to the listserv for this interest group, please contact SMDM staff at info@smdm.org. List members can send a message to the group via clinresintegrity@smdm.org.

CTSA CER Interest Group

The purpose of this interest group is to network with the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Consortium to promote comparative effectiveness research (CER). By now, you are likely aware of SMDM’s initiatives in CER and have read many CER papers in SMDM’s journal, Medical Decision Making.

Another organization active in promoting CER is the CTSA Consortium, which is comprised of representatives from the 60 CTSA sites across the country. One of the strategic goals of the Consortium is entitled Enhancing the Health of Our Communities and the Nation. That strategic goal committee has created a CER Key Function Committee (KFC), with initiatives related to collaboration, information dissemination, methods, and education, training, and workforce development. The CER KFC holds its annual face-to-face meeting just before the annual SMDM meeting. SMDM members are active in the CTSA CER KFC, just as SMDM members are active in the new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and other CER organizations.

If you’re interested in CER activities in the CTSA, whether or not you’re affiliated with a CTSA institution, the CTSA-CER Interest Group is for you! For more information, contact Joel Tsevat or Stephen Pauker. To be added to the list serve, contact SMDM staff at info@smdm.org. List members can send a message to the group via CTSAmembers@smdm.org

Decision Psychology Interest Group
The goal of the Decision Psychology Interest Group is to design empirical approaches for addressing three questions: What are the relevant values in medical decision making from both a physician and patient perspective? How can we measure these values in the complex and dynamic psychological environment that defines medicine? And how can we incorporate these values meaningfully into the decision making process in order to lead to choices which are both more informed and consistent with important values? The group welcomes members who wish to examine the psychological context of medical decision making and the application of decision psychology to improve the quality of medical decisions. For more information, please contact SMDM staff at info@smdm.org. List members can send a message to the group via psych@smdm.org.

Diagnostic Errors in Medicine

For more information, contact Cindy Bryce. To be added to the listserv for this interest group, please contact SMDM staff at info@smdm.org

Disaster Simulation Modeling Interest Group
The goal of the Disaster Simulation Modeling Interest Group is to bring together people working on various aspects of public health, disaster, and medical emergency responses to compare and share modeling approaches, results, and funding opportunities. Our members work on a variety of disaster scenarios (bioterrorism, natural outbreaks of infectious disease, other natural disasters such as earthquakes), take an assortment of perspectives (that of community dwellers, hospitals and health care providers, public health and emergency response professionals), focus on a number of critical processes (patient flow, logistics, critical pathways) and use a variety of methodologies (discrete event simulation, steady-state modeling, cost-benefit analyses). Members' work is designed to inform local, state, and federal disaster preparedness and response efforts. We welcome anyone interested in joining this growing branch of decision making research. For more information, contact Nathaniel Hupert, MD, MPH. To be added to the listserv for this interest group, please contact SMDM staff at info@smdm.org.

Discrete Event Simulation
Discrete event simulation is a methodology for modeling systems in which entities compete for limited respurces and where a stochastic element is important. The modeling and approach testing approaches are analogous to those used in decision analysis and modern desktop software to make such models feasible and relatively user friendly. It is most useful in understanding problems that are intractable by analytic methods, in which systems are dynamic and in which changes over time are important. For more information contact James Stahl, MD, MPH. To be added to the listserv for this interest group, please contact SMDM staff at info@smdm.org. List members can send a message to the group via des@smdm.org.

Ethics Research Interest Group
The ethics research interest group will provide a forum for promoting the use of decision science methods in empirical ethics research and for examining the ethical implications of decision-analysis and cost-effectiveness methodologies. The group welcomes the involvement of members who may not identify themselves as ethics researchers but who wish to further examine the ethical dimensions and uses of decision-making research and its methods. For further information, contact Kevin Weinfurt, PhD. To be added to the listserv for this interest group, please contact SMDM staff at info@smdm.org. List members can send a message to the group via ethics@smdm.org

Infectious Disease Modeling Interest Group
There is growing interest among public health and public policy decision makers for help with evaluating strategies for vaccination, primary prevention, screening etc. - many of which require dynamic modeling strategies. The Infectious Disease Modeling Interest Group will have a broad focus in infectious disease modeling encompassing all areas of infectious diseases ranging from directly transmitted infections (contact, airborne) to sexually transmitted infections and vector-borne infections. This Interest Group will bring together SMDM members with an interest and/or expertise in infectious disease modeling, particularly in dynamic disease modeling to provide opportunities for intellectual exchange, research collaboration, and networking.

The group will establish a network of researchers with interest in infectious disease modeling to

• discuss the similarities and differences between infectious disease modeling and decision analytic modeling,
• explore the use of dynamic infectious models to evaluate disease intervention programs, develop immunization guidelines, and inform health care decision making,
• facilitate the further development of dynamic modeling techniques particularly for the purpose of health care decision making,
• bring together epidemiologists/public health experts and dynamic modelers for the purpose of collecting data that can be used to parameterize dynamic models
• promote the importance and use of dynamic modeling techniques to a wider audience
• develop a portfolio of training materials in dynamic infectious disease modeling

For more information, contact Beate Sander, RN, MBA or David Fisman, MD, MPH. To be added to the listserv for this interest group, please contact SMDM staff at info@smdm.org. List members can send a message to the group via id-modeling@smdm.org.

Medical Informatics
The Medical Informatics Interest Group is a forum for SMDM members to discuss the development and evaluation of decision support tools and other computer applications to promote the use of evidence-based medicine. For more information, contact Holly Jimison, PhD. To be added to the listserv for this interest group, please contact SMDM staff at info@smdm.org. List members can send a message to the group via informatics@smdm.org.

Pharmacoeconomics
The pharmacoeconomics interest group is a forum for SMDM members from academia, industry and government to discuss issues involving methodology, education, research applications and career opportunities. One area of particular interest is the international evaluation of new drugs. For more information, contact Kevin Frick, PhD. To be added to the listserv for this interest group, please contact SMDM staff at info@smdm.org. List members can send a message to the group via pharma@smdm.org.

Shared Decision Making Interest Group
The Shared Decision Making Interest Group includes clinicians, methodologists, and policy makers who are interested in developing and evaluating techniques to help patients participate in decisions about their care. The Interest Group provides a forum to discuss practical and theoretical challenges in the presentation of medical information and the elicitation of choices. Members of this group have participated in International Patient Decision Aids Standards (IPDAS) project. For further information, contact Deb Feldman-Stewart, PhD or Jim Dolan, MD. To be added to the listserv for this interest group, please send an email to David Rovner: rovner@msu.edu. List members can send a message to the group via shared-l@list.msu.edu.

Teaching MDM
The Teaching MDM Interest Group promotes collaboration in the development of educational materials, curricular resources, and instructional methods for teaching medical decision making to health care professionals, patients, and policy makers. Some of the specific goals of the group include:

• Collection of an extensive and diverse set of member-developed teaching materials, exercises, syllabi, and notes for dissemination to other educators.
• Development and maintenance of an outline of "standard topics" for typical MDM courses.
• Providing a forum for members to obtain feedback on newly developed courses or materials.
• Contribution of articles on teaching MDM for the Society's journal and/or newsletter.
• Collaboration in educational research on strategies for teaching MDM and evidence-based medicine.