Interactive Decisions from CBSSM


By clicking on an interactive decision, you can get hands-on experience with CBSSM's innovative research in behavioral health and medical decision making. Each scenario turns a recent research finding into a decision that a patient or a policy maker might face.

In our interactive decisions, we:
  • replicate actual research surveys
  • display alternative graphical representations of health risks
  • present choices in bioethics
  • explore emotions related to health
  • and much more.

Clinical topics range widely and have included paraplegia, renal disease, immunization, infertility, HIV/AIDS, cancer, women's health, organ transplants, and colostomy.

CBSSM's interactive decisions can be controversial, but they're always stimulating. Read, decide, click - and get a full commentary on the implications of your decisions!

A full archive of our interactive decisions can be found here.

The CBSSM interactive Decision of the Month:

Informed Consent Document Utilization

What do subjects need to know in order to agree to participate in research?  An informed consent document is assumed to communicate the essential information, but it is not clear how carefully research participants read these documents.

How Risky are “High Risk” Kidneys?

The government requires that potential kidney transplant recipients be informed if an organ donor engaged in CDC categorized “high-risk” behaviors. Are these “high risk” donor kidneys associated with worse survival rates following transplantation? Does this label “high risk” result in usable kidneys being discarded?

The ethics of resuscitation

Traditional ethical teaching suggests that a physician's assessment of a patient's best interest should guide the decision of whether to administer emergency life-sustaining therapy, absent guidance by the patient or family members.  In pediatric medicine, physicians may insist on life-saving therapy if they believe it is in a child's best interest to receive it, even if the parents seek to refuse it.  It is unclear exactly how physicians make such assessments, however, and whether/how these assessments influence decision-making in critical situations.  Consider the following scenario: