Mountain safety and avalanche survival are natural topics of interest to decision scientists! Check out a recent 3 part CNN special featuring Dean Cardinale ( Part 1 :   Part 2 :   Part 3 :). Dean Cardinale has guided and climbed in North and Central America, Africa, South America and the Himalayas. He is the US representative to the International Commission of Alpine Rescue, Ski Patrol Director for Snowbird, and President of Wasatch Backcountry Rescue group. While working on a seven summits bid (including Mt Everest in 2005) he conceived of a nonprofit organization HOP ( Human Outreach Project ) that provides basic medical and educational supplies to impoverished communities in remote difficult-to-reach areas of the world. Committed to the empowerment of local communities surrounding expedition sites, Sue J Goldie, serves as chairman of this nonprofit board, and she and Dean work to ensure humanitarian efforts are culturally appropriate, build local capacity, and are sustainable. Several  members of the Center for Health Decision Science support HOP activities.

 

Professor Emeritus Howard Raiffa Receives 2008 Shelling Award.  The Schelling Award is presented annually to an individual whose remarkable intellectual work has had a transformative impact on public policy.  The Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Managerial Economics, Emeritus, Professor Raiffa is recognized for his lifetime of work in the field of decision analysis.  He was the first Director of the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and a founding faculty member of the modern-day Kennedy School.

 

The Lancet announced announced their Paper of the Year, in the January 13 issue. From more than 700,000 indexed papers on PubMed, two papers by Program in Health Decision Science researchers were among the 23 nominated final favorites; Goldie SJ, et al. Cost-effectiveness of HIV treatment in resource-poor settings--the case of Cote d'Ivoire. N Engl J Med 2006;355:1141-53, and Gaziano TA, Opie LH, Weinstein MC. Cardiovascular disease prevention with multidrug regimen in the developing world. Lancet 2006;368:679-686.  

Dr. Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine, gave a provocative presentation on the importance of the field of Decision Science and the challenges within the field, at a symposium honoring Dr. Sue Goldie, Director of the Program in Health Decision Science, on December 20, 2006. For more information, click: www.hsph.harvard.edu/now/20070119/goldie.html