The Potential of Shared Decision Making to Reduce Health Disparities

Current methods of obtaining an informed consent leave much to be desired. Patients rarely read consent forms or understand all of the risks, benefits, or alternatives associated with their treatment. Evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of treatment options often presents a more significant challenge for patients with lower levels of health literacy.

This article reviews the evidence of shortcomings in our informed consent system and then explores the potential for a new approach to engage patients at all levels of health literacy in their treatment decisions. Specifically, the article will examine the potential of shared decision-making (SDM) to bridge gaps in knowledge, increase patient adherence to treatment, and improve health outcomes in low health literacy patient populations. Leveling barriers to treatment information for disadvantaged populations should be a public health imperative, especially if it can be shown to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities.

Preface

  1. 1 Lawyers, Guns, and Money
  2. 2 Making the Case for Laws that Improve Health
  3. 3 What Gets Measured, Gets Changed
  4. 4 Health in All Policies
  5. 5 The Potential of Shared Decision Making to Reduce Health Disparities
  6. 6 Environmental Public Health Law
  7. 7 State Boards of Health
  8. 8 Policy Issues in American Indian Health Governance
  9. 9 Global Public Health Legal Responses to H1N1
  10. 10 Public Health Preparedness Laws and Policies
  11. 11 Protecting the Mental Health of First Responders
  12. 12 Five Legal Preparedness Challenges for Responding to Future Public Health Emergencies
  13. 13 Implementing Health Reform at the State Level
  14. 14 Rhetorical Federalism
  15. 15 Meaningful Use and Certification of Health Information Technology
  16. 16 Right to Health Litigation and HIV/AIDS Policy
  17. 17 The Role of Federal Preemption in Injury Prevention Litigation
  18. 18 Regulating Food Retail for Obesity Prevention
  19. 19 Pursuing Health Equity
  20. 20 The Michigan BioTrust for Health
  21. 21 Becoming the Standard
  22. 22 Smoking in Movies and Television
  23. 23 Clearing the Air
  24. 24 Social Norms and Attitudes About Smoking
  25. 25 More than a Decade of Helping Smokers Quit
  26. 26 The Impact of Tax and Smoke-Free Air Policy Changes
  27. 27 RWJF's Tobacco Work
  28. 28 Major Tobacco-Related Events in the United States
  29. 29 Surgeon General's Reports on Tobacco
  30. 30 The Way We Were
  31. 31 Tobacco-Control Work, 1991-2010
  32. 32 IMPACT

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