Members of the USC Mann Health Economics community were honored at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM), held from June 28 to July 1, at the University of Oslo, Norway. Two USC scholars received the Lee B. Lusted Prizes, which recognize outstanding presentations by early-career researchers and rank among the highest honors in health decision science.
PhD student Jonathan Cloughesy received the Margaret Holmes-Rovner Award for Outstanding Presentation in Decision Psychology and Shared Decision Making for his abstract, “Defaults Options Increase Overriding of Advance Directives: Evidence from a Vignette-Based Laboratory Experiment.”
Rahul Mudumba, who graduated earlier this year with a PhD in health economics, received the Anne Stiggelbout Award for Outstanding Presentation in Patient and Stakeholder Preferences and Engagement for his abstract, “Accounting For Risk-Aversion in Health Technology Assessment: Utility Estimation Across Multiple Health Indexes in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.”
“The Lusted Prize is one of the most prestigious awards for early career researchers in health decision science, and these awards reflect the exceptional talent of our students and researchers,” says Geoffrey Joyce, professor and chair of the USC Mann School’s Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics. “Both Jon and Rahul worked hard, had great mentoring (from Jason Doctor and Darius Lakdawalla, respectively), and wrote strong dissertations. Their awards were well deserved.”
USC was well represented among the competition’s finalists, who included Yingwei Huang and Fanghong (Francie) Huang, both PhD students at the USC Mann School, and Felipe Montano-Campos, postdoctoral research scholar at the USC Schaeffer Institute.
Founded in 1979, SMDM is an international, interdisciplinary society dedicated to improving health outcomes through research on medical decision making and health policy.