SMDM Recognizes Stanford Team for Research and Leadership
SMDM Recognizes Stanford Team for Research and Leadership
Stanford Health Policy faculty and trainees win big at the 2025 Society for Medical Decision Making conference.
Two PhD students working with Stanford Health Policy faculty won top honors at the annual meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) for cancer screening research—and one of their mentors took home the award for distinguished service.
Melissa Franco-Galicia and Selina Pi both won Lee B. Lusted Awards, which recognize young researchers in the field of medical decision making. They are among the most prestigious awards for early researchers, named for Dr. Lee B. Lusted, a pioneer in medical decision making and founding member of the society. Their faculty mentor Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert took home the society’s distinguished service award.
Franco-Galicia, working toward her PhD in health policy, presented research on the potential impact of the federal government eliminating free breast cancer screenings. From 2009 to 2024, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended biennial screenings starting at age 50. New guidelines now include women aged 40 to 49, expanding access to these free, potentially life-saving screenings.
A legal challenge before the Supreme Court, Braidwood vs. Kennedy, threatened to eliminate this cost-free benefit for women in their forties. To assess the potential impact, Franco-Galicia built a model to simulate screening behavior and timing.
“The results suggest that losing coverage for this age group could greatly reduce the benefits of early breast cancer screenings,” Franco-Galicia said, whose Lusted Award category was for the outstanding presentation in health services, outcomes and policy research. “Our policy evaluation’s primary contribution was to develop, calibrate, validate and apply an adaptable and effective model to address this pressing policy question.”
The Court on June 27 upheld the Affordable Care Act mandate that requires private health insurance to provide the free breast cancer screenings for women. Franco-Galicia’s faculty advisor, Josh Salomon, PhD, professor of health policy, recently published a study that showed how tens of millions of individuals would have lost a slew of free preventive services had the justices ruled that they were unconstitutional.
“The good news is that guaranteed preventative breast cancer screening will continue to be covered without any out-of-pocket costs for millions of women following the SCOTUS ruling,” said Franco-Galicia. “However, the dialogue around oversight of health care recommendations by the USPSTF continues.”
Colorectal Cancer
Selina Pi, a PhD student in the Department of Biomedical Data Science, is being mentored by SHP’s Fernando Alarid-Escudero, an assistant professor of health policy, and Jonathan Chen, MD, PhD, an associate professor of medicine. She presented research on the initial steps to develop a simulator for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening behaviors. Pi focused on modeling the age that adults in the United States begin screening for CRC based on more than three decades of health behavior data from the National Health Interview Survey.
Finding that standard age-period-cohort models from the epidemiologist’s toolkit failed to capture shocks in screening rates driven by changes in screening guidelines, Pi developed a new model to describe historical trends in the use of colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, and proctoscopy.
“By understanding these trends, we can make informed predictions for future screening uptake, including changes in when people begin screening in response to a reduction in the recommended CRC screening start age in 2021,” Pi said. Her poster presentation of this work received the Lusted Award in the category of outstanding presentation in quantitative methods and theoretical developments.
“I’m incredibly grateful for the mentorship of my PhD advisor Fernando Alarid-Escudero and co-authors Amy Knudsen and Karen Kuntz, the feedback from the Colorectal Working Group of the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET), the support of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, and all the last-minute practice sessions I had with colleagues in SHP who generously shared their time,” said Pi. “It’s been so rewarding to have gotten the chance to work with such talented decision scientists and modelers in SHP and CISNET.”
Distinguished Service
Goldhaber-Fiebert, PhD, professor of health policy and a faculty advisor to both Franco-Galicia and Pi, earned the SMDM Award for Distinguished Service for his “groundbreaking work” to advance medical decision making. The award also recognizes his leadership and contributions to the scientific and educational activities of the society.
Goldhaber-Fiebert said in his acceptance speech that the work of the society improves the health and well-being of people around the world.
“And by promoting decision science in health and medicine, and by training and supporting future researchers and practitioners, SMDM creates a community that furthers this goal,” he said.
Goldhaber-Fiebert has been a faculty advisor to dozens of SHP trainees, who last year gave him the department’s inaugural Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring award.
“Working with trainees and early career scientists is simply the best part of my job and I know this is true for many society members,” he said.
